Supermassive black holes in cosmological simulations I: M_BH-M_star relation and black hole mass function

Understand

The past decade has seen significant progress in understanding galaxy formation and evolution using large-scale cosmological simulations.

• While these simulations produce galaxies in overall good agreement with observations, they employ different sub-grid models for galaxies and supermassive black holes (BHs).
• We investigate the impact of the sub-grid models on the BH mass properties of the Illustris, TNG100, TNG300, Horizon-AGN, EAGLE, and SIMBA simulations, focusing on the M_BH-M_star relation and the BH mass function.
• All simulations predict tight M_BH-M_star relations, and struggle to produce the lowest (M_BH< 10^7.5 Msun) in galaxies of M_star~10^10.5-10^11.5 Msun.