The assembly of the first massive black holes

Abstract: 

Large-scale cosmological hydrodynamical simulations are becoming indispensable to face the challenge of massive black hole (MBH) formation, growth, and co-evolution with their host galaxies. I will discuss what we have learned from these simulations, how their modeling strongly impact the population of MBHs and AGN. I will present recent predictions on the population of AGN across cosmic time and high-redshift quasars. In particular, I will show that according to the current large-scale simulations of the field measuring the MBH mass and Eddington ratios of faint quasars with JWST opens a path to understand the build-up of more normal MBHs at z>6. I will also discuss whether JWST and other next-generation space missions have the power to directly detect the bulk of the MBH population (i.e., lower-mass MBHs than the quasars) at high-redshift.