Observing Supermassive Black Holes across cosmic time: from phenomenology to physics

In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that supermassive black holes reside in the nuclei of almost every galaxy, grow over cosmological times by accreting matter, interact and merge with each other, and in the process liberate enormous amounts of energy that influence dramatically the evolution of the surrounding gas and stars, providing a powerful self-regulatory mechanism for galaxy formation. The different energetic phenomena associated to growing black holes and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), their cosmological evolution and the observational techniques used to unveil them, are the subject of this chapter. In particular, I will focus my attention on the connection between the theory of high-energy astrophysical processes giving rise to the observed emission in AGN, the observable imprints they leave at different wavelengths, and the methods used to uncover them in a statistically robust way. I will show how such a combined effort of theorists and observers have led us to unveil most of the SMBH growth over a large fraction of the age of the Universe, but that nagging uncertainties remain, preventing us from fully understating the exact role of black holes in the complex process of galaxy and large-scale structure formation, assembly and evolution.Comment: 46 pages, 21 figures. This review article appears as a chapter in the book: "Astrophysical Black Holes", Haardt, F., Gorini, V., Moschella, U and Treves A. (Eds), 2015, Springer International Publishing AG, Cha

A Preliminary Comparison of Meiobenthic Cladoceran Assemblages in Natural and Constructed Wetlands in Central Florida

In Florida, phosphate mining companies that destroy natural wetlands are required to construct mitigation wetlands. Comparisons of plant communities are frequently used to determine the degree to which constructed wetlands mimic natural wetlands, but efforts to address similarity based on fauna are rare. Studies in lake littoral zones suggest that meiobenthic cladocerans possess characteristics that may make their use in wetland comparisons advantageous. In this study, meiobenthic cladocerans were sampled from 8 natural freshwater wetlands and 11 freshwater wetlands constructed on phosphate-mined lands. The pulsed nature of the cladoceran communities limits their value as a quantitative measure of the similarity of natural and constructed wetlands. Qualitative analyses based on the presence or absence of species suggest that cladoceran assemblages of some constructed wetlands mimic those of some natural wetlands, but the range of assemblages found in constructed wetlands is narrower than that found in natural wetlands. © 1993 Society of Wetland Scientists

A statistical relation between the X-ray spectral index and Eddington ratio of active galactic nuclei in deep surveys

We present an investigation into how well the properties of the accretion flow on to a supermassive black hole may be coupled to those of the overlying hot corona. To do so, we specifically measure the characteristic spectral index, Γ, of a power-law energy distribution, over an energy range of 2–10 keV, for X-ray selected, broad-lined radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGN) up to z ∼ 2 in Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and Extended Chandra Deep Field South (E-CDF-S). We test the previously reported dependence between Γ and black hole mass, full width at half-maximum (FWHM) and Eddington ratio using a sample of AGN covering a broad range in these parameters based on both the Mg II and Hα emission lines with the later afforded by recent near-infrared spectroscopic observations using Subaru/Fibre Multi Object Spectrograph. We calculate the Eddington ratios, λEdd, for sources where a bolometric luminosity (LBol) has been presented in the literature, based on spectral energy distribution fitting, or, for sources where these data do not exist, we calculate LBol using a bolometric correction to the X-ray luminosity, derived from a relationship between the bolometric correction and LX/L3000. From a sample of 69 X-ray bright sources (>250 counts), where Γ can be measured with greatest precision, with an estimate of LBol, we find a statistically significant correlation between Γ and λEdd, which is highly significant with a chance probability of 6.59× 10−8. A statistically significant correlation between Γ and the FWHM of the optical lines is confirmed, but at lower significance than with λEdd indicating that λEdd is the key parameter driving conditions in the corona. Linear regression analysis reveals that Γ = (0.32 ± 0.05) log10λEdd + (2.27 ± 0.06) and Γ = (−0.69 ± 0.11) log10(FWHM/km s−1) + (4.44 ± 0.42). Our results on Γ–λEdd are in very good agreement with previous results. While the Γ–λEdd relationship means that X-ray spectroscopy may be used to estimate black hole accretion rate, considerable dispersion in the correlation does not make this viable for single sources, however could be valuable for large X-ray spectral samples, such as those to be produced by eROSITA