A Practical Guide to the Massive Black Hole Cosmic History

Abstract

I review our current understanding of massive black hole (MBH) formation and evolution along the cosmic history. After a brief introductory overview of the relevance of MBHs in the hierarchical structure formation paradigm, I discuss the main viable channels for seed BH formation at high redshift and for their subsequent mass growth and spin evolution. The emerging hierarchical picture, where MBHs grow through merger triggered accretion episodes, acquiring their mass while shining as quasars, is overall robust, but too simplistic to explain the diversity observed in MBH phenomenology. I briefly discuss which future observations will help to shed light on the MBH cosmic history in the near future, paying particular attention to the upcoming gravitational wave window.