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Understanding the growth of supermassive black holes at the center of most galaxies is a quite interesting challenge today. It is believed that their growth is enhanced by galaxy mergers, in which cold gas is driven to the center of the remnant. This triggering mechanism can be modeled quite simply by following the merger history of dark matter haloes. Theoretical models beyond the extended Press-Schechter prescription can give a quite detailed description of halo assembly with great resolution and scope. Moreover, this formalism allows us to compute halo merger rates with great accuracy. We present an analytic model where quasars are triggered by major mergers of dark matter haloes. Excellent match against the AGN luminosity function, the quasar bias, etc., is found. Simple, yet powerful models like this are very promising to guide more advanced semi-analytic models in the future. |