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The fates of massive galaxies are tied to the evolution of their centralsupermassive black holes (BHs), due to the influence of AGN feedback.Correlations within simulated galaxy populations suggest that the masses of BHsare governed by properties of their host dark matter haloes, such as thebinding energy and assembly time, at a given halo mass. However, the fullpicture must be more complex as galaxy mergers have also been shown toinfluence the growth of BHs and the impact of AGN. In this study, weinvestigate this problem through a controlled experiment, using the geneticmodification technique to adjust the assembly history of a Milky Way-likegalaxy simulated with the EAGLE model. We change the halo assembly time (andhence the binding energy) in the absence of any disruptive merger events, andfind little change in the integrated growth of the BH. We attribute this to theangular momentum support provided by a galaxy disc, which reduces the inflow ofgas towards the BH and effectively decouples the BH's growth from the halo'sproperties. Introducing major mergers into the assembly history disrupts thedisc, causing the BH to grow $\approx 4\times$ more massive and inject feedbackthat reduces the halo baryon fraction by a factor of $\approx 2$ and quenchesstar formation. Merger events appear essential to the diversity in BH masses inEAGLE, and we also show that they increase the halo binding energy;correlations between these quantities may therefore be the result of mergerevents.

Are the fates of supermassive black holes and galaxies determined by individual mergers, or by the properties of their host haloes?