Tracing black hole and galaxy growth across environments since cosmic noon

[2607.07793] Tracing black hole and galaxy growth across environments since cosmic noon Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies arXiv:2607.07793 (astro-ph) [Submitted on 8 Jul 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 26 Aug 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Tracing black hole and galaxy growth across environments since cosmic noon Authors: Emma Jane Weller , Priyamvada Natarajan , Colin J. Burke , Shashank Dattathri View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: The distribution of systems in the black hole (BH) mass-stellar mass ($M_\mathrm{BH}-M_\star$) plane encodes both the integrated growth of galaxies and their central black holes, and the processes that shape their evolution. Using the ASTRID and TNG300 cosmological simulations, we track massive BHs from cosmic noon ($z=2$) to $z=0.5$. TNG300 repositions BHs to the centers of their host galaxies at every time step, while ASTRID instead advances them under the resolved gravitational forces plus a subgrid dynamical friction model, allowing BHs to wander off-center when orbital decay is inefficient. We follow the BHs rather than their original host galaxies, thereby capturing central BHs, BHs in satellites, and wandering BHs. We find that central BHs in both simulations evolve along a tight, nearly redshift-invariant $M_\mathrm{BH}-M_\star$ relation that is broadly consistent with local empirical constraints. Departures from this relation trace distinct evolutionary channels in which mergers play a key role. Major galaxy mergers drive BH-BH coalescence that dominates the growth of the most massive central BHs. These BHs subsequently quench their hosts through active galactic nucleus (AGN) kinetic feedback. Minor mergers tidally strip satellites to lower $M_\star$ at nearly fixed $M_\mathrm{BH}$, producing weakly accreting, overmassive central BHs in gas-poor systems. In ASTRID, satellite accretion and inefficient dynamical friction generate wandering BHs that are undermassive relative to their new hosts and experience minimal accretion or merger-driven growth. A BH's location in the $M_\mathrm{BH}-M_\star$ and specific BH accretion rate-specific star formation rate planes is therefore a fossil record of its dynamical, accretion, merger, and feedback history. Comments: 17 pages, 11 figures. Published in ApJ Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Cite as: arXiv:2607.07793 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2607.07793v2 [astro-ph.GA] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.07793 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: Emma Jane Weller et al 2026 ApJ 1008 70 Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9288 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Emma Weller [ view email ] [v1] Wed, 8 Jul 2026 18:00:01 UTC (15,295 KB) [v2] Wed, 26 Aug 2026 19:28:28 UTC (15,298 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: astro-ph.GA < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-07 Change to browse by: astro-ph References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar 1 blog link ( what is this? ) export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. 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