Cosmological simulations of the growth of supermassive black holes and feedback from active galactic nuclei: method and tests

We present a method that self-consistently tracks the growth of supermassive black holes (BHs) and the feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) in cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations. Our model is a substantially modified version of the one introduced by Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist implemented in a significantly expanded version of the GADGET III code, which contains new prescriptions for star formation, supernova feedback, radiative cooling and chemodynamics. We simulate the growth of BHs from an initial seed state via Eddington-limited accretion of the surrounding gas, and via mergers with other BHs. Because cosmological simulations at present lack both the resolution and the physics to model the…

• MO
  Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
• NO
  Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
• VC
  Virgo Consortium