Gas accretion onto central supermassive black holes of active galaxies and resulting energy feedback, is an important component of galaxy evolution, whose details are still unknown especially at early cosmic epochs. We investigate BH growth and feedback in quasar-host galaxies at z ⩾ 6 by performing cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We simulate the 2R200 region around a 2 × 1012 Mʘ halo at z = 6, inside a (500 Mpc)3 comoving volume, using the zoom-in technique. We find that BHs accrete gas at the Eddington rate over z = 9–6. At z = 6, our most-massive BH has grown to MBH = 4 × 109 Mʘ. Star-formation is quenched over z = 8–6.

We use the Bolshoi Simulation to find the most probable location of the Local Group (LG) in the cosmic web. Our LG simulacra are pairs of halos with isolation and kinematic properties consistent with observations. The cosmic web is defined using a tidal tensor approach. We find that the LG's preferred location is regions with a dark matter overdensity close to the cosmic average. This makes filaments and sheets the preferred environment. We also find a strong alignment between the LG and the cosmic web. The orbital angular momentum is preferentially perpendicular to the smallest tidal eigenvector, while the vector connecting the two halos is strongly aligned along the the smallest tidal eigenvector and perpendicular to the largest tidal eigenvector; the pair lies and moves along filaments and sheets. We do not find any evidence for an alignment between the spin of each halo in the pair and the cosmic web.

We use properties of void populations identified in N-body simulations to forecast the ability of upcoming galaxy surveys to differentiate models of f(R) gravity from \lcdm cosmology. We analyze simulations designed to mimic the densities, volumes, and clustering statistics of upcoming surveys, using the public {\tt VIDE} toolkit. We examine void abundances as a basic probe at redshifts 1.0 and 0.4. We find that stronger f(R) coupling strengths produce voids up to ∼20% larger in radius, leading to a significant shift in the void number function. As an initial estimate of the constraining power of voids, we use this change in the number function to forecast a constraint on the coupling strength of Δ fR0 = 10-5.