The First Quasars in Cosmic Structure Formation

Tiziana Di Matteo

September 27, 2012

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Abstract: As we are just attempting to understand how galaxy formation is connected to the growth of supermassive black holes one fundamental challenge remain. Observations show us that the first quasars, are assembled when the universe was only a tenth of its current age, yet their black holes are as massive as the ones in today’s galaxies. I will discuss state-of-the-art large-scale simulations which attempt to study directly the growth of the first, rare supermassive black holes within the context of our standard structure formation models.