Supermassive black hole formation during the assembly of pre-galactic discs

By G. Lodato, P. R. I. O. Astronomy, Cambridge, UK., D. O. Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, Usa, D. Physics. 2006

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In this paper, we discuss the evolution of gravitationally unstable pre-galactic discs that result from the collapse of haloes at high redshift z ≈ 10 or so, which have not yet been enriched by metals. In cases where molecular hydrogen formation is suppressed, the discs are maintained at a temperature of a few thousand Kelvin. However, when molecular hydrogen is present, cooling can proceed down to a few hundred Kelvin. Analogous to the case of the larger-scale protogalactic discs, we assume that the evolution of these discs is mainly driven by angular momentum redistribution induced by the development of gravitational instabilities in the disc. We also properly take into account the possibility of disc fragmentation. We thus show that this simple model naturally predicts the formation of supermassive black holes in the nuclei of such discs and provides a robust determination of their mass distribution as a function of halo properties. We estimate that roughly 5 per cent of discs resulting from the collapse of haloes with M ≈ 10 7 M ⊙ should host a massive black hole with a mass M BH ≈ 10 5 M ⊙ . We confirm our arguments with time-dependent calculations of the evolution of the surface density and of the accretion rate in these primordial discs. The luminosity of the outer, colder disc is expected to be very low (in the range of a few thousand L ⊙ ), while the formation of the black hole is expected to produce a burst with a luminosity of a few times 10 9 L ⊙ . This mechanism offers an efficient way to form seed black holes at high redshift. The predicted masses for our black hole seeds enable the comfortable assembly of 10 9 -M ⊙ black holes powering the luminous quasars detected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at z = 6 for a concordance cosmology.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/43c9a05e2a916d6c3be023abe2b4d19902917e28

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Citations in the corpus

Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes (2017, background): “IMBHs could also form inside the first metal-free (or very metal-poor) protogalaxies by direct collapse of rapidly inflowing dense gas (e.g., Loeb & Rasio 1994; Eisenstein & Loeb 1995; Bromm & Loeb 2003; Lodato & Natarajan 2006).”
Hyper-Eddington accretion flows on to massive black holes (2015, background): “…by general relativistic instability and turns to a massive seed BH with mass of & 105 M⊙ (Loeb & Rasio 1994; Oh & Haiman 2002; Bromm & Loeb 2003; Lodato & Natarajan 2006; Begelman, Volonteri & Rees 2006; Regan, Johansson & Haehnelt 2014; Inayoshi, Omukai & Tasker 2014; Becerra et al. 2015;…”
SUPER-CRITICAL GROWTH OF MASSIVE BLACK HOLES FROM STELLAR-MASS SEEDS (2014, background): “…may form through the “direct collapse” of low angular momentum gas at high redshift (e.g. Loeb & Rasio 1994; Bromm & Loeb 2003; Koushiappas et al. 2004; Lodato & Natarajan 2006; Spaans & Silk 2006; Regan & Haehnelt 2009; Mayer et al. 2010), likely via the intermediate stage of supermassive…”
The aftermath of the first stars: massive black holes (2006, background): “It remains therefore an open question whether the SMBHs that power the z >∼ 6 quasars could have grown from stellar remnants, or whether more massive seed black holes were required (e.g. Bromm & Loeb 2003; Lodato & Natarajan 2006).”
Quasars at z = 6: The Survival of the Fittest (2006, methodology): “We refer the reader to Volonteri & Rees (2005) and Lodato & Natarajan (2006) for a detailed description of the model.”
Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude (2018, background): “…seeds can arise from “direct collapse black holes” (DCBHs; Bromm & Loeb 2003; Shang et al. 2010; Johnson et al. 2012), self-gravitating pre-galactic disks (Begelman et al. 2006; Lodato & Natarajan 2006), or runaway stellar mergers (Devecchi & Volonteri 2009; Davies et al. 2011; Stone et al. 2017).”
Ubiquitous seeding of supermassive black holes by direct collapse (2012, background): “An alternative scenario is to make seed BHs with an initial M• = 104−5 M⊙ via the direct collapse of pristine gas in haloes withTvir > 104 K (see e.g. Eisenstein & Loeb 1995; Oh & Haiman 2002; Bromm & Loeb 2003; Koushiappas et al. 2004; Lodato & Natarajan 2006).”
The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays (2008, background): “…formation and evolution have been proposed (e.g. Volonteri, Haardt & Madau 2003, Koushiappas, Bullock & Dekel 2004, Begelman, Volonteri & Rees 2006, Lodato & Natarajan 2006): the predicted number density of MBHBs and their distribution as a function of mass and redshift vary considerably,…”
Can Supermassive Black Holes Form in Metal-enriched High-Redshift Protogalaxies? (2008, background): “Oh & Haiman (2002) and Lodato & Natarajan (2006) have also showed that if H2 formation is inhibited, a primordial gas disk is stable to fragmentation and a single massive object is formed in accordance with BL03’s conclusion.”
Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. III: probing the expansion of the universe using gravitational wave standard sirens (2016, methodology): “Several versions of this heavy-seed scenario have been proposed [31–34], but here we follow Paper I and adopt the model of [34].”
Black Hole Spin and Galactic Morphology (2007, background): “…by z = 6, so that they can represent the engines of quasars with luminosity L > 1046erg s−1, BHs need to grow from typical seed masses (e.g. Madau & Rees 2001, Koushiappas et al. 2003, Begelman, Volonteri & Rees 2006, Lodato & Natarajan 2006) by at least 3-4 orders of magnitude in 108−109 years.”
Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “Lodato & Natarajan (2006) suggested that a few percent of pre-galactic disks forming in the dark matter halos at high redshift may form a massive object depending on the properties of hosting halos such as spin, mass and cooling properties.”
Pathways to massive black holes and compact star clusters in pre-galactic dark matter haloes with virial temperatures ≳10 000 K (2008, methodology): “…2001; Fan 2001; Fan et al. 2006) requires a rapid and efficient build-up of SMBHs, challenging models based on Eddington limited growth of stellar mass black holes (e.g. Volonteri et al. 2003; Volonteri & Rees ⋆ E-mail:regan@ast.cam.ac.uk 2005; Haiman 2006; Lodato & Natarajan 2006; Volonteri 2007).”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “…possibly by turbulence and by an intense ultraviolet background light, in an environment of low metallicity (Begelman et al., 2006, Bromm and Loeb, 2003, Dijkstra et al., 2008, Dotan et al., 2011, Haehnelt and Rees, 1993, Koushiappas et al., 2004, Lodato and Natarajan, 2006, Loeb and Rasio, 1994).”
Supermassive black hole formation by direct collapse: keeping protogalactic gas H2 free in dark matter haloes with virial temperatures Tvir > rsim 104 K (2009, background): “…directly into a BH as massive as 104 − 106 M⊙ (Oh & Haiman 2002 [hereafter OH02]; Bromm & Loeb 2003 [hereafter BL03]; Koushiappas et al. 2004; Lodato & Natarajan 2006; Spaans & Silk 2006; Begelman et al. 2006; Volonteri et al. 2008), possibly onto a pre–existing smaller seed BH (Volonteri…”
The evolution of massive black hole seeds (2007, methodology): “…between the observed MBH − σ relation and the one predicted by our models (shown with circles), and in particular, from left to right, the three models based on the Lodato & Natarajan (2006, 2007) seed masses with Qc = 1.5, 2 and 3, and a fourth model based on lower-mass Population III star seeds.”