Fredagskollokvium: The quest for single and dual active galactic nuclei: a numerical perspective

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are believed to lie at the centre of most galaxies and to coevolve with them, growing through both mergers and accretion, shining as active galactic nuclei (AGN), and feeding part of the accretion energy back to their hosts. When galaxies merge, SMBHs may reveal themselves as dual AGN and, much later in the merging process, as gravitational-wave sources. I address a variety of questions, related to both dynamics and growth of SMBHs, by using high-resolution, N-body, hydrodynamical simulations of mergers between late-type galaxies, in which I vary mass ratios, gas fractions, and orbital configurations, and where I include realistic descriptions of cooling, stellar and black hole feedback, and star formation. In this talk, I will mostly focus on examining which mergers preferentially trigger AGN activity, distinguishing between merger-related and secular-related accretion, tracing the resultant evolution of the SMBH mass ratios in the pairing process, describing different gas feeding paths, and connecting theory with observations in the search for dual AGN.