Black holes at the centers of the galaxies grow mainly by the processes of accretion, mergers, and consumption of stars. In the case of gas accretion with cooling sources, the flow is momentum driven, after which the black hole reaches a saturated mass, and subsequently, it grows only by consumption of stars. In addition, we include the effect of mergers on the growth of black hole spin and mass and study its evolution as a function of redshift in a ΛCDM cosmology using an initial seed mass and spin distribution functions that we have derived. For the stellar ingestion, we have assumed a power-law density profile for the galaxy in our framework of a new relativistic loss cone theory that includes the effect of the black hole spin. We predict the impact of the evolution on the M•−σ relation and compare it with available observations.

Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are highly variable high energy phenomena originating from Galactic Nuclei (Komossa & Bade 1999). TDEs are thus powerful tools to study quiescent Galactic Nuclei given their extreme brightness (several times super-Eddington) and the possibility of being seen in non-AGN galaxies. A TDE is the violent disruption of a star passing by a Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH); after the disruption, roughly half of the star mass gains enough energy to escape from the Black Hole, while the other half is bound to the Hole, falls back and eventually accretes onto it. Early works, (Rees 1988), pointed out a t−5/3 behaviour for the light curves of this event and since then such a time dependency became the signature of these events. Strong deviations are however introduced when one considers the internal stellar structure or if one considers partial disruptions. One feature that has never been taken into account is the effect of stellar rotation in the resulting fallback rate, which is the aim of the present work. Firstly, we will show analytical estimates of the impact of stellar rotation on the TDE and we will then present a set of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic simulations of the tidal disruption of rotating stars, performed in order to test these analytical estimates.

The Perseus cluster is the X-ray brightest cluster in the sky and with deep Chandra observations we are able to map its central structure on very short spatial scales. In addition, the high quality of X-ray data allows detailed spatially-resolved spectroscopy. In this paper I review what these deep observations have told us about AGN feedback in clusters, sloshing and instabilities, and the metallicity distribution.

Diffuse radio emission from galaxy clusters in the form of radio halos and relics are tracers of the shocks and turbulence in the intra-cluster medium. The imprints of the physical processes that govern their origin and evolution can be found in their radio morphologies and spectra. The role of mildly relativistic population of electrons may be crucial for the acceleration mechanisms to work efficiently. Low frequency observations with telescopes that allow imaging of extended sources over a broad range of low frequencies (<2 GHz) offer the best tools to study these sources. I will review the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) observations in the past few years that have led to: i) statistical studies of large samples of galaxy clusters, ii) opening of the discovery space in low mass clusters and iii) tracing the spectra of seed relativistic electrons using the Upgraded GMRT.

In our earlier studyDutta (2016a), it has been shown that a number of primordial protostars (the ‘first stars’ in the Universe, also known as Population III or Pop III stars) are being ejected from the cluster of their origin with the velocity exceeding their escape velocity. Hence there is possibility that some of these protostars can enter main sequence and survive till present epoch, even in Milky Way. We ask the question if the protostars can avoid core collapse, and stop accreting before being ejected from the cluster, with the final mass of stars as 0.8 Mȯ.

The hot ISM in early-type galaxies (ETGs) plays a crucial role in understanding their formation and evolution. The structural features of the hot gas identified by Chandra observations point to key evolutionary mechanisms, (e.g., kim12). In our Chandra Galaxy Atlas (CGA) project, taking full advantage of the Chandra capabilities, we systematically analyzed the archival Chandra data of 72 ETGs and produced uniform data products of the hot gas properties. The main data products include spatially resolved 2D spectral maps of the hot gas from individual galaxies. We emphasize that new features can be identified in the spectral maps which are not easily visible in the surface brightness maps. The high-level images can be viewed at the dedicated CGA website, and the CGA data products can be downloaded to compare with other wavelength data and to perform user-specific analyses. Utilizing our data products, we will further address focused science topics.

The growing evidence for energy-conserving outflows in powerful and luminous AGN supports the idea that high-velocity winds launched from the accretion disc evolve systematically after undergoing a shock with the ambient medium and that they are capable to expel enough mass and energy so as to produce feedback. This talk will give an overview of recent results on AGN ultra fast outflows, with focus on grating X-ray spectra of bright sources. I will review how UFO work, their observational properties and their relation with AGN outflows in other bands, what is their impact on the host galaxies and their role in feedback processes.

We analyze the hard X-ray properties of five radio-loud active galactic nuclei with peculiar spectral shape. High-energy exponential cut-offs (HEC) in their hard X-ray 3-500 keV spectra are too high for radio loud AGNs (above 100 keV) or even absent.The probable reason of such visible spectral “peculiarity” can be due to the “jet contamination”, i.e we see some mixture of the jet and nuclear emission, but not pure emission of the innermost nucleus. Here we try to estimate the jet and nuclear components of the spectra for a sample of “peculiar” RL AGNs to find out whether these are real or fake features.

Large-scale, broad outflows are common in active galaxies. In systems where star formation coexists with an AGN, it is unclear yet the role that both play on driving the outflows. In this work we present three-dimensional radiative-cooling MHD simulations of the formation of these outflows, considering the feedback from both the AGN and supernovae-driven winds. We find that a large-opening-angle AGN wind develops fountain structures that make the expanding gas to fallback. Furthermore, it exhausts the gas near the nuclear region, extinguishing star formation and accretion within a few 100.000 yr, which establishes the duty cycle of these outflows. The AGN wind accounts for the highest speed features in the outflow with velocities around 10.000 km s−1 (as observed in UFOs), but these are not as cold and dense as required by observations of molecular outflows. The SNe-driven wind is the main responsible for the observed mass-loading of the outflows.

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at sub-millimeter waves has the potential to image the shadow of the black hole in the Galactic Center, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and thereby test basic predictions of the theory of general relativity. We investigate the imaging prospects of a new Space VLBI mission concept. The setup consists of two satellites in polar or equatorial circular Medium-Earth Orbits with slightly different radii, resulting in a dense spiral-shaped uv-coverage with long baselines, allowing for extremely high-resolution and high-fidelity imaging of radio sources. We simulate observations of a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics model of Sgr A* for this configuration with noise calculated from model system parameters. After gridding the uv-plane and averaging visibilities accumulated over multiple months of integration, images of Sgr A* with a resolution of up to 4 μ as could be reconstructed, allowing for stronger tests of general relativity and accretion models than with ground-based VLBI.

Observations of low luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) and the hard state of black hole X-ray binaries (BHBs) show that the wind exists. Black hole in LLAGNs and hard state of BHBs accretes gas in hot accretion mode. In this paper, we first use magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of hot accretion flow around a black hole to study the origin of the wind. We find that the wind is driven by the combination of gradients of gas and magnetic pressure and centrifugal forces. Second, we use simulations with focus on the region around Bondi radius to study whether the wind can be generated outside Bondi radius. In the simulation studying hot accretion flow around Bondi radius, in addition to the black hole gravity, we also take into account the gravity of nuclei stars. We find that the wind can not be generated outside Bondi radius. The absence of the wind is due to the change of gravity potential.

We investigate the sample of 16 the youngest radio galaxies with measured kinematic ages and available X-ray data from high-resolution Chandra or XMM-Newton observations. We characterize the accretion properties and derive the jet kinetic luminosities for our sources. We found high accretion rates (>1% Eddington) and very high jet production efficiency for all the sources from our sample.This, along with the fact that the analyzed objects seem over-luminous in radio on the fundamental plane for the black hole activity, implies also that the radiative efficiency of the compact lobes is much higher than in the case of the evolved radio galaxies.

Radio jets are the large-scale and extragalactic footprints of accretion onto supermassive black holes, and are suggested to be the key ingredient controlling the galaxy stellar mass function. Of particular importance is their jet power - the time-averaged energetic feedback into their environment. Hence, the dynamics, energetics and life-cycles of radio-loud AGN (RLAGN) must be understood in order to build a qualitative and quantitative picture of their impact over cosmic time. Here, we present a study of the spectral age of two powerful, cluster-center radio galaxies, and compare with an analytic model to robustly determine their jet powers. We also present some recent LOFAR observations of the different phases of RLAGN activity, namely the remnant and subsequent restarting phases, which are key to understanding the dynamics of RLAGN over their total lifetime.

We analyse archival XMM-Newton observations of the massive galaxy group NGC 4839 falling into the Coma cluster core, which reveal a complex morphology for the merger. By comparing high quality X-ray maps of the merging subcluster with SPH simulations, we propose an infall scenario which qualitatively reproduces the observed structure of the NGC 4839 tail.

Black holes are usually observed to be of stellar-mass or supermassive. By natural extension, there should be a population of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes (IMBHs: with mass between 100 to 106M⊙) in the Universe; which has started to been observed. An exciting claim has been made recently by Silk (2017): that early feedback by IMBHs in gas-rich dwarf galaxies at z = 5–8, can potentially solve multiple dwarf galaxy problems within the Λ-cold-dark-matter cosmology. We are performing Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations of (2Mpc)3 volumes, starting from z = 100, to test the case for IMBHs in Dwarf Galaxies. Black holes of mass 1000M⊙ are seeded inside halos when they reach a mass of 107M⊙. The black holes grow by accretion of gas from their surroundings and by merger with other black holes, and consequently eject feedback energy. We analyze the simulation output in post-processing to study the growth of the first IMBHs, and their impact on star-formation. Our conclusions, based on numerical simulation results, support the phenomenological ideas made by Silk (2017). IMBHs at the centers of dwarf galaxies can be a strong source of feedback to quench star-formation and generate outflows. At the same time, these IMBHs form the missing link between stellar-mass and supermassive BHs.

Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are a common feature between Active and Quiescent Galactic Nuclei; the study of these events is a very useful tool to probe phenomena that relate to the formation of an accretion disc or a jet. Also, the accretion rate at the beginning of the tidal flare is expected to be significantly super-Eddington and might result in high energy emission (in soft X-rays but sometimes up to the gamma regime, as in the the case of Swift J1644, see Komossa 2015). These events may even play an important role in the newborn field of the Multimessenger Astronomy. This work is set within this context. Indeed, it is a study of generation of Gravitational Waves (GWs) from the hot accreting torus resulting after a TDE. Since the torus has only formed recently, magnetic fields are not expected to be strong enough, so that the torus is likely to be unstable to the Papaloizou-Pringle Instability (PPI), producing a strongly varying mass quadrupole. Here, the study of the evolution of such tori is developed, using both analytical calculation and a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation (SPH). In particular the goal of this work is to determine the GW waveform and to compute the characteristic strain of these GWs in order to see if they are detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

We report the analysis of the gamma-ray variability of NGC 1275–the radio galaxy at the center of the Perseus cluster. NGC 1275 has been observed continuously with the Fermi Large Area Telescope over the last nine years. We applied different time-domain analysis methods including Fourier, wavelets and Bayesian methods, in order to search for quasi-periodic oscillations in the gamma-ray emission. We found no evidence for periodicities of astrophysical origin.

The fully analytical solution for isothermal Bondi accretion on a black hole (MBH) at the center of JJ two-component Jaffe (1983) galaxy models is presented. In JJ models the stellar and total mass density distributions are described by the Jaffe profile, with different scale-lengths and masses, and to which a central MBH is added; all the relevant stellar dynamical properties can also be derived analytically. In these new accretion solutions the hydrodynamical and stellar dynamical properties are linked by imposing that the gas temperature is proportional to the virial temperature of the stellar component. The formulae that are provided allow to evaluate all flow properties, and are then useful for estimates of the accretion radius and the mass flow rate when modeling accretion on MBHs at the center of galaxies.

Radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) produce relativistic jets that can be modelled with relativistic hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations. In this study we present two such simulations of jets, used to investigate the parameters required to reproduce structures consistent with both FR I and FRII jets. In the first simulation a Lorentz factor of 10 and supersonic flow of Mach 30 were chosen, while for the second simulation a Lorentz factor of 1.0014 with a supersonic flow of Mach 4 was used. Over similar distances scales the first case shows a well collimated beam with a strong shock at the interface between the jet and ambient medium while the second case shows a less stable beam and a larger cocoon. To determine whether the simulated physical structures are consistent with the observed FR I/II jets, the synchrotron emission has been calculated to produce radio maps at a single frequency of 1.5 GHz.

Several cool-core clusters are known to host a radio mini-halo, a diffuse, steep-spectrum radio source located in their cores, thus probing the presence of non-thermal components as magnetic field and relativistic particles on scales not directly influenced by the central AGN. The nature of the mechanism that produces a population of radio-emitting relativistic particles on the scale of hundreds of kiloparsecs is still unclear. At the same time, it is still debated if the central AGN may play a role in the formation of mini-halos by providing the seed of the relativistic particles. We aim to investigate these open issues by studying the connection between thermal and non-thermal components of the intra-cluster medium. We performed a point-to-point analysis of the radio and the X-ray surface brightness of a compilation of mini-halos. We find that mini-halos have super-linear scalings between radio and X-rays, with radio brightness declining more steeply than the X-ray brightness. This trend is opposite to that generally observed in giant radio halos, thus marking a possible difference in the physics of the two radio sources. Finally, using the scalings between radio and X-rays and assuming a hadronic origin of mini-halos we derive constraints on the magnetic field in the core of the hosting clusters.