VOLONTERI , Marta

The coalescence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) should generate the strongest sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the Universe. However, the dynamics of their coalescence is the subject of much debate. In this study, we use a suite of N-body simulations to follow the merger of two nuclear star clusters (NSCs), each hosting an SMBH in...

Disk galaxies are believed to consist of structures with different kinematics and stellar populations: young disk stars rotating on the galactic plane and old stellar bulge and halo having non-ordered motions. In the favored LCDM paradigm, several internal and external processes work together in settling the kinematic components. Investigating...

The origin of the disk and spheroid of galaxies has been a key open question in understanding their morphology. Using the high-resolution cosmological simulation New Horizon, we explore kinematically decomposed disk and spheroidal components of 144 field galaxies with masses greater than ${10}^{9}\,{M}_{\odot }$ at z = 0.7. The origins of...

Based on the recent advancements in the numerical simulations of galaxy formation, we anticipate the achievement of realistic models of galaxies in the near future. Morphology is the most basic and fundamental property of galaxies, yet observations and simulations still use different methods to determine galaxy morphology, making it difficult...

Based on the recent advancements in numerical simulations of galaxy formation, we anticipate the achievement of realistic models of galaxies in the near future. Morphology is the most basic and fundamental property of galaxies, yet observations and simulations still use different methods to determine galaxy morphology, making it difficult to...

Astrophysical black holes (BHs) have two fundamental properties: mass and spin. While the mass-evolution of BHs has been extensively studied, much less work has been done on predicting the distribution of BH spins. In this paper we present the spin evolution for a sample of intermediate-mass and massive BHs from the newHorizon simulation, which...

Ever since a thick disk was proposed to explain the vertical distribution of the Milky Way disk stars, its origin has been a recurrent question. We aim to answer this question by inspecting 19 disk galaxies with stellar mass greater than $10^{10}\,\rm M_\odot$ in recent cosmological high-resolution zoom-in simulations: Galactica and NewHorizon....

(Reduced) Using the recent cosmological high-resolution zoom-in simulations, NewHorizon and Galactica, in which the evolution of black hole spin is followed on the fly, we have tracked the cosmic history of a hundred of black holes (BHs) with a mass greater than 2x10^4 Ms. For each of them, we have studied the variations of the three...

Massive black hole (MBH) coalescences are powerful sources of low-frequency gravitational waves. To study these events in the cosmological context, we need to trace the large-scale structure and cosmic evolution of a statistical population of galaxies, from dim dwarfs to bright galaxies. To cover such a large range of galaxy masses, we analyse...

The scaling relations between the gas content and star formation rate of galaxies provide useful insights into the processes governing their formation and evolution. We investigated the emergence and the physical drivers of the global Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation at 0.25 ≤ z ≤ 4 in the cosmological hydrodynamic simulation NEWHORIZON,...

Hydrodynamical cosmological simulations are increasing their level of realism by considering more physical processes and having greater resolution or larger statistics. However, usually either the statistical power of such simulations or the resolution reached within galaxies are sacrificed. Here, we introduce the NewHorizon project in which we...

ABSTRACT The past decade has seen significant progress in understanding galaxy formation and evolution using large-scale cosmological simulations. While these simulations produce galaxies in overall good agreement with observations, they employ different sub-grid models for galaxies and supermassive black holes (BHs). We investigate the impact...

The past decade has seen significant progress in understanding galaxy formation and evolution using large-scale cosmological simulations. While these simulations produce galaxies in overall good agreement with observations, they employ different sub-grid models for galaxies and supermassive black holes (BHs). We investigate the impact of the...