 | \small {{\bf Upper left panel}: Tracks of BH growth, for different initial {\it seed} masses assuming uninterrupted accretion at the Eddington rate and at rates twice above this limit. The different colored symbols labeled in the figure refer to $z>6$ observations of quasars by ALMA (green squares \cite{Neeleman:2019knu}) and JWST (red diamonds ~\cite{2024ApJ...966..176Y, 2024ApJ...964...90S, 2023ApJ...959...39H, Maiolino:2023bpi, 2023Natur.621...51D}), including the $z\sim 10$ massive black holes in UHZ$1$ (magenta circle \cite{Bogdan:2023ilu}), GHZ$9$ (black cross \cite{Kovacs:2024zfh}) and the candidate super-Eddington accreting black hole in GN$-$z$11$ (violet hexagon \cite{Maiolino:2023zdu}). Light seeds can explain these quasars if they accrete at a super-Eddington rate. Heavy seeds, forming at lower redshifts, do not necessarily need sustained super-Eddington accretion. There is a debate whether sustained accretion above the Eddington limit is likely in high-redshift galaxies~\cite{Pezzulli:2017ikf, 2019MNRAS.486.3892R, Trinca:2022txs, Massonneau:2022uwg, Lupi:2023oji, Greene:2024phl}. The black, blue and red tracks refer to state-of-the-art high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations~\cite{Lupi:2023oji, Lupi:2019jgo} where a $10^5\Msun$ black hole was implanted at $z=10$ and let evolve including accretion and feedback. {\bf Upper right panel}: Cartoon sketching the mass spectrum of black holes and the different formation paths. Arrows and labels indicate selected quasars, the Milky Way black hole, Sgr A$^*,$~\cite{Genzel:2010zy, EventHorizonTelescope:2022wkp} M$87$~\cite{EventHorizonTelescope:2019pgp}, and the post-merger mass of GW$150914$ and GW$190521$, the first and the most massive coalescence events detected to date by LVK, respectively~\cite{LIGOScientific:2016wkq, LIGOScientific:2020iuh}. Shown are the windows of exploration of ET and LISA. {\bf Lower left panel}: BH mass spectrum at $z=4$ from \cite{Trinca:2022txs} as inferred from a suite of semi-analytical models and numerical simulations to show the still large theoretical uncertainties in predicting BH evolution. Data points show the distribution of light (magenta) and heavy (red, orange) BH seeds, with the best fit for the distribution of heavy seeds in red and violet dotted lines, and the results from large-scale cosmological simulations: Illustris (dark green, cyan, and blue \cite{Sijacki:2014yfa, weinberger2017}), SIMBA (olive \cite{Dave:2019yyq}), and EAGLE (light green \cite{McAlpine:2018dua}). The observational constraints by \cite{Merloni:2008hx} and \cite{Shankar:2007zg} are shown in the grey shaded area and black dashed-dotted lines. {\bf Lower right panel}: evolution of the BH mass function from the semi-analytical model L-Galaxies \cite{Izquierdo-Villalba:2023ypb}. The figure shows how the intermediate-mass range is being progressively filled due to the growth of light seeds from population III relics (Courtesy of Izquierdo Villalba). } |