Formation of supermassive black holes by direct collapse in pre-galactic haloes

By M. Begelman, M. Volonteri, Martin J. Rees. 2006

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We describe a mechanism by which supermassive black holes (SMBHs) can form directly in the nuclei of protogalaxies, without the need for 'seed' black holes left over from early star formation. Self-gravitating gas in dark matter haloes can lose angular momentum rapidly via runaway, global dynamical instabilities, the so-called 'bars within bars' mechanism. This leads to the rapid build-up of a dense, self-gravitating core supported by gas pressure - surrounded by a radiation pressure-dominated envelope - which gradually contracts and is compressed further by subsequent infall. We show that these conditions lead to such high temperatures in the central region that the gas cools catastrophically by thermal neutrino emission, leading to the formation and rapid growth of a central black hole. We estimate the initial mass and growth rate of the black hole for typical conditions in metal-free haloes with T vir ∼ 10 4 K, which are the most likely to be susceptible to runaway infall. The initial black hole should have a mass of?20 M ⊙ , but in principle could grow at a super-Eddington rate until it reaches ∼10 4 10 6 M ⊙ . Rapid growth may be limited by feedback from the accretion process and/or disruption of the mass supply by star formation or halo mergers. Even if super-Eddington growth stops at ∼10 3 -10 4 M ⊙ , this process would give black holes ample time to attain quasar-size masses by a redshift of 6, and could also provide the seeds for all SMBHs seen in the present Universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50c163d6d5ad443b44177f99412158ee953e97a5

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Citations in the corpus

Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. I. Virialization (2007, background): “…manifest itself in different types of central luminous objects, whether it be a stellar disk (Fall & Efstathiou 1980; Mo et al. 1998), a starburst (see §4 in Kennicutt 1998, for a review), or a massive black hole (Bromm & Loeb 2003; Volonteri et al. 2005; Spaans & Silk 2006; Begelman et al. 2006).”
B-mode contamination by synchrotron emission from 3-yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data (2006, neutral): “In this case there is clearly no prospect of growing the inferred SMBH masses ∼ 5 × 109M⊙ at redshift z ≃ 6 from stellar–mass seed holes, and one would have to consider other possibilities (e.g. Volonteri & Rees, 2005; Begelman et al., 2006).”
Pathways to massive black holes and compact star clusters in pre-galactic dark matter haloes with virial temperatures ≳10 000 K (2008, background): “Begelman et al. (2006) dubbed such an object a “quasistar” and envisage its evolution as follows.”
Ubiquitous seeding of supermassive black holes by direct collapse (2012, background): “The redistribution of angular momentum can occur via the ‘bars-within-bars’ scenario as explored by Begelman et al.(2006) where the gas collapses into a dense self-gravitating core surrounded by an envelope supported by radiation pressure.”
The Romulus cosmological simulations: a physical approach to the formation, dynamics and accretion models of SMBHs (2016, background): “…faster than the star formation timescale as it has not been turned into a star already) while b) cooling relatively slowly, approximating formation cites predicted for SMBH seed formation Begelman et al. (2006); Volonteri (2012) The criteria above were not chosen via an extensive parameter search.”
Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “It comes from the fact that accretion time scale is considerably shorter than the nuclear burning time scale and therefore the core collapses into a black hole (Begelman et al. 2006; Begelman 2010).”
Small-scale dynamo action during the formation of the first stars and galaxies - I. The ideal MHD limit (2010, background): “…of such fields thus provides additional stability during the formation of intermediate-mass black holes, which are often considered to form in such systems (e.g. Eisenstein & Loeb 1995; Koushiappas et al. 2004; Begelman et al. 2006; Spaans & Silk 2006; Shang et al. 2009; Schleicher et al. 2010).”
Evolution of supermassive stars as a pathway to black hole formation (2009, background): “The energy liberated during the formation of the black hole inflates the remainder of the star into a bloated object that resembles a red giant, which we have previously termed a ‘quasi-star’ (Begelman et al. 2006; Begelman, Rossi & Armitage 2008).”
Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. II. Central Gravitational Collapse (2007, background): “Begelman et al. (2006) investigated the conditions where a gaseous disk in a pregalactic halo would become rotationally unstable to bar formation (see Christodoulou et al. 1995a, 1995b).”
The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “Galaxy mergers may be a way through which SMBHs form by direct collapse of gas at the center of protogalaxies (Begelman et al., 2006; Mayer et al., 2010; Mayer and Bonoli, 2019).”
Can Supermassive Black Holes Form in Metal-enriched High-Redshift Protogalaxies? (2008, background): “Finally, Begelman et al. (2006) and Spaans& Silk (2006) proposed different mechanisms 1 National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan; omukai@th.nao.ac.jp.”
Titans of the early Universe: The Prato statement on the origin of the first supermassive black holes (2018, background): “…for modern star-formation have also been studied in the context of Pop III SMSs and are thought to be sufficiently efficient: – magnetic fields (Latif & Schleicher 2016); – gravitational torques (Begelman et al. 2006; Wise, Turk, & Abel 2008); – viscosity in the disk (Takahashi & Omukai 2017).”