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 will 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.
