A Synthetic View of AGN Evolution and Supermassive Black Holes Growth

I will describe the constraints available from a study of AGN evolution synthesis models on the growth of the supermassive black holes (SMBH) population in the two main 'modes' observed (kinetic- and radiatively-dominated, respectively). I'll show how SMBH mass function evolves anti-hierarchically, i.e. the most massive holes grew earlier and faster than less massive ones, and I will also derive tight constraints on the average radiative efficiency of AGN. An outlook on the redshift evolution of the AGN kinetic luminosity function will also be discussed, thus providing a robust physical framework for phenomenological models of AGN feedback within structure formation. Finally, I will present new constraints on the evolution of the black hole-galaxy scaling relation at 1 < z < 2 derived by exploiting the full multi-wavelength coverage of the COSMOS survey on a complete sample of 90 type 1 AGN.