14–19 Jun 2026
Brindisi
UTC timezone

The role of major mergers in triggering super-Eddington accretion

17 Jun 2026, 10:35
15m
Sala Conferenze presso Autorità di Sistema Portuale (Brindisi)

Sala Conferenze presso Autorità di Sistema Portuale

Brindisi

Speaker

Riccardo Caleno (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Description

JWST observations have opened a new window on the early Universe, revealing black holes with masses of several million solar masses already at z>8, which challenge our understanding of their accretion mechanisms. In recent years, super-Eddington accretion has emerged as a promising solution and has been adopted in both simulations and semi-analytical models.

In this talk, I will present the results of my recent work investigating the role of super-Eddington accretion in cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations during a major merger between two haloes at z=11. We performed a suite of runs exploring different seeding prescriptions and feedback configurations. I will show that in the majority of the runs performed, the merger has a negligible impact on black hole accretion, while accretion is primarily regulated by black hole kinetic feedback and the gas density around it.

Author

Riccardo Caleno (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.