Spin, Accretion, and the Cosmological Growth of Supermassive Black Holes

By Stuart L. Shapiro. 2004

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

If supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are the energy sources that power quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), then QSO SDSS 1148+5251, the quasar with the highest redshift (zQSO = 6.43), hosts an SMBH formed within ~0.9 Gyr after the big bang. This requirement places constraints on the cosmological formation of SMBHs, believed to grow from smaller initial seeds by a combination of accretion and mergers. We focus on gas accretion onto seeds produced by the collapse of Population III stars at high redshift. We incorporate the results of recent relativistic, MHD simulations of disk accretion onto Kerr black holes to track the coupled evolution of the masses and spins of the holes. We allow for an additional amplification of ~104 in the mass of a typical seed due to mergers, consistent with recent Monte Carlo simulations of hierarchical mergers of cold dark matter halos containing black hole seeds. We find that the growth of Population III black hole remnants to ~109 M☉ by zQSO ≳ 6.43 favors MHD accretion disks over standard thin disks. MHD disks tend to drive the holes to a submaximal equilibrium spin rate a/M ~ 0.95 and radiation efficiency ϵM ~ 0.2, while standard thin disks drive them to maximal spin (a/M = 1) and efficiency (ϵM = 0.42). This small difference in efficiency results in a huge difference in mass amplification by accretion at the Eddington limit. The MHD equilibrium efficiency is consistent with the observed ratio of the QSO plus AGN luminosity density to the local SMBH mass density. Our prototype analysis is designed to stimulate the incorporation of results from relativistic stellar collapse and MHD accretion simulations in future Monte Carlo simulations of hierarchical structure formation to better determine the cosmological role of SMBHs and their mass and spin distributions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bade5c0ebf9b9c45063159aa19de1388afc7eecf

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SELF-CONSISTENT MODELS OF THE AGN AND BLACK HOLE POPULATIONS: DUTY CYCLES, ACCRETION RATES, AND THE MEAN RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY (2007, background): “MHD simulations (e.g., Gammie et al. 2004; Shapiro 2005) show that disk accretion onto Kerr black holes spins them up to an equilibrium spin ratea ≈ 0.95 (wherea = 1 is the angular momentum parameter for a maximally rotating black hole).”
Four Quasars above Redshift 6 Discovered by the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey (2007, background): “Forming such massive black holes within the first billion years of the universe provides a challenge to models of galaxy formation, black hole formation and black hole growth (Bromley et al. 2004; Yoo & Miralda-Escudé 2004; Shapiro 2005; Volonteri & Rees 2005; King & Pringle 2006).”
Growth of Structure Seeded by Primordial Black Holes (2006, background): “In others, the seeds are the remnants of Population III stars (Shapiro 2005; Volonteri & Rees 2005), or they might be primordial.”
Ejection of Supermassive Black Holes from Galaxy Cores (2007, background): “While the assumption of near-maximal spins is probably not an extreme one (e.g. Shapiro 2005; Gammie et al. 2004), orienting the BHs with their spins perpendicular to the orbital angular momentum may seem odd, particularly in gasrich galaxies (Bogdanović et al. 2007).”
EDDINGTON-LIMITED ACCRETION AND THE BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION AT REDSHIFT 6 (2010, background): “Another possibility is higher efficiency which lowers the Salpeter time-scale and may be expected for rapidly spinning black holes (Shapiro 2005).”
SUPER-CRITICAL GROWTH OF MASSIVE BLACK HOLES FROM STELLAR-MASS SEEDS (2014, background): “The third condition requires radiative efficiencies that are below those expected for thin disk accretion onto rapidly spinning Kerr black holes (ǫ ≃ 0.3 − 0.4, Thorne 1974; Shapiro 2005), and approach the value, ǫ = 0.057, characteristic of the Schwarzschild non-rotating solution.”
A Fundamental Relation between Compact Stellar Nuclei, Supermassive Black Holes, and Their Host Galaxies (2006, background): “…for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 13 Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI 96720 Unfortunately, the physical mechanisms underlying this connection remain obscure (e.g. Silk & Rees 1998; Portegies Zwart et al. 2004; Shapiro 2005).”
Black hole formation in the early Universe (2013, background): “These massive clumps will collapse to similar mass black holes at the end of their lifetime, which can grow to the observed 109 M black holes at z ∼ 6to7 via Eddington accretion (Shapiro 2005).”
Can Supermassive Black Holes Form in Metal-enriched High-Redshift Protogalaxies? (2008, background): “The repeated loss of the growing seeds makes it especially challenging to account for the several times 109M SMBHs at zk 6 without at least a brief phase of super-Eddington accretion, or some equivalent ‘‘head start’’ (Haiman 2004; Yoo & Miralda-Escudé 2004; Shapiro 2005; Volonteri & Rees 2006).”
Physical Properties of 15 Quasars at z ≳ 6.5 (2017, background): “…hole of mass MBH,f is grown from an initial seed MBH,seed, assuming it accretes with a constant Eddington ratio for all the time, can be written as (Shapiro 2005, Volonteri & Rees 2005): t Gyr = ts × [ 1− ] × LEdd Lbol × ln ( MBH,f MBH,seed ) (14) where ts = 0.45 Gyr is the Salpeter time and ∼…”
SUBARU HIGH-z EXPLORATION OF LOW-LUMINOSITY QUASARS (SHELLQs). I. DISCOVERY OF 15 QUASARS AND BRIGHT GALAXIES AT 5.7 < z < 6.9 (2016, unknown): “Because this timescale is comparable to the cosmic time that elapsed between z = 20 and z = 6, the SMBH mass function at z > 6 conveys critical information about the mass distribution of the seed black holes and the mode of subsequent growth, including super-Eddington accretion (Kawaguchi et al. 200”
Rapid Growth of High-Redshift Black Holes (2005, background): “Given M(0), the higher the efficiency, the longer it takes for the BH to grow in mass by (say) 20 e-foldings (Shapiro 2005).”
A synthesis model for AGN evolution: supermassive black holes growth and feedback modes (2008, background): “(14) in theξlost, 〈a∗〉 panel, where〈a∗〉 is the mass weighted average spin parameter of the SMBH calculatedinverting the classical GRη(a) relation (Shapiro 2005) and taking into account the assumed relationship of eq.”
An HLLC Riemann solver for relativistic flows – II. Magnetohydrodynamics (2006, background): “Accretion onto supermassive black holes, for example, is invoked as the primary mechanism to power highly energetic phenomena observed in active galactic nuclei, (Macchetto 1999; Elvis, Risaliti & Zamorani 2002; McKinney 2005; Shapiro 2005).”
Cosmological Black Hole Spin Evolution by Mergers and Accretion (2008, background): “…BH mass and the mass of the galactic bulge hosting the BH. Spin measurements are generally more uncertain (Narayan 2005; Miller 2007), and the cosmological coevolution of BH masses and spins is a significant open problem in our understanding of quasars and AGNs (Gammie et al. 2004; Shapiro 2005).”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, background): “The time needed by a BH seed to grow at a constant rate from an initial mass M0 to a final mass Mt is equal to (Shapiro 2005) t = 0.45 Gyr ( 1 − ) LEdd LBol ln ( Mt M0 ) , (19) where 0.45 Gyr is the is the characteristic accretion timescale (obtained assuming a mean molecular weight per electron μe…”
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): “BHs are therefore easily ejected, or at least displaced from the dense nuclei of their host halos at high redshift, interrupting their accretion (Haiman 2004; Yoo & Miralda-Escudé 2004; Shapiro 2005, Volonteri & Rees 2006; Blecha & Loeb 2008; Tanaka & Haiman 2009).”
THE ASSEMBLY OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AT HIGH REDSHIFTS (2008, background): “Simple semianalytic models show that if every merger resulted in a kick large enough to remove the seed BHs from halos with velocity dispersions up to ≈50 km s−1, then super-Eddington accretion would be required to build SMBHs of the required mass in the available time (Haiman 2004; Shapiro 2005).”
Total and Jet Blandford-Znajek Power in the Presence of an Accretion Disk (2005, background): “Based upon Sołtan-type arguments, AGNs each probably harbor a rapidly rotating (a/M ∼ 0.9–0.95) black hole (Urry & Padovani 1995; Elvis et al. 2002; Gammie et al. 2004; Shapiro 2005).”