The Growth and Seeding of Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe with AXIS

The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) probe, with its unprecedented X-ray imaging sharpness over a large field of view, provides two order of magnitudes improvement in survey grasp with respect to Chandra. With this powerful combination of depth and field of view, AXIS will extend our knowledge of supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth up to z~10 and beyond, peering into the epoch of SMBH seeding and growth. By combining AXIS data with spectro-photometric surveys collected by the Roman, Euclid and JWST observatories we will be able to both complete the census of all AGN at z<6 and compare the newfound high-z X-ray luminosity function with AGN seeding models. AXIS will be the state of art “survey machine” of the 2030’s and will perfectly complement NASA efforts to study the epoch of the first light.