International School of Cosmic Ray Astrophysics

14^th  Course: "Neutrinos and Explosive Events in the Universe"

A NATO Advanced Study Institute

 2-13 July 2004
Ettore Majorana Centre
Erice, Sicily, Italy

Topic: Supermassive black holes (SBH) and primordial black holes (PBH)
Lecturer: Jacob Bekenstein

I review current evidence for SMBH in AGNs and in normal galaxies (gas dynamics vs stellar dynamics), the demographics of SMBH, the primary SMBH mass determination methods (gas and star kinematics, megamaser, reverberation).  Examples include Sgr A*, and the SMBHs in M87 and NGC4258.  I follow with a review of the evolution of SMBH, including the relation of gas accretion to AGN lifetimes, and the growth of SMBH by stellar capture and by mergers. I report the latest on the perennial question, which came first, SMBH or host galaxy ?  The SMBH content of spirals vs ellipticals and bulges vs pseudobulges is analyzed.   The role of the profile of the Fe K-alpha line as probe of relativistic effects in the accretion disk is touched upon.  The status of the BH mass-bulge mass correlation is discussed.  The evidence for intermediate mass BHs is  reviewed as well as their possible connection with the microquasars.  Our review of PBHs mentions the relation between PBH formation and primordial cosmological inhomogeneity, as well as that between PBH lifetime and the Hawking radiation.  We discuss  the  constrains on the inflationary scenario and on QCD physics from limits on PBH abundance.  We consider the observational evidence for and against PBH explosions.   The latest about the brane scenario, and the prospect for the production of micro BHs at particle accelerators is reported. 

 J. Kormendy and  K. Gebhardt, "Supermassive Black Holes in Nuclei of Galaxies", in Twentieth Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics,  eds.. H. Martel and J.C. Wheeler, (AIP, 2002); astro-ph/0105230.

B. Carr,  "Primordial Black Holes as a Probe of Cosmology and High Energy Physics", astro-ph/0310838.