The cosmic history of black hole growth

Abstract

Significant progress has been made in the last few years in our understand- ing of how and when supermassive black holes form and grow. Here, I review our current knowledge of the cosmic evolution of the population of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), which hosts most of the supermassive black hole growth. Thanks to deep multiwavelength surveys it has been found that the most luminous systems, in which black holes get most of their mass, evolve rather strongly, showing a peak at z 2 and are more likely triggered by major mergers of gas-rich galaxies. In contrast, the density of lower lu- minosity sources, which dominate the AGN population by number, remains relatively constant with redshift. Recent observational evidence shows that these episodes are most likely triggered by secular (stochastic) processes or minor galaxy interactions. Thanks to upcoming missions with enhanced sensitivity at E>10 keV, such as NuSTAR and Astro-H, it will be finally possible in the next few years to obtain a complete study of the supermas- sive black hole growth, including the elusive Compton-thick sources.

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