Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe

By I. Mirabel, M. Dijkstra, P. Laurent, Abraham Loeb, J. Pritchard. 2011

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. It is well established that between 380 000 and 1 billion years after the Big Bang the Inter Galactic Medium (IGM) underwent a "phase transformation" from cold and fully neutral to warm (≈ 104 K) and ionized. Whether this phase transformation was fully driven and completed by photoionization by young hot stars is a question of topical interest in cosmology. Aims: We propose here that besides the ultraviolet radiation from massive stars, feedback from accreting black holes in high-mass X-ray binaries (BH-HMXBs) was an additional, important source of heating and reionization of the IGM in regions of low gas density at large distances from star-forming galaxies. Methods: We use current theoretical models on the formation and evolution of primitive massive stars of low metallicity, and the observations of compact stellar remnants in the near and distant universe, to infer that a significant fraction of the first generations of massive stars end up as BH-HMXBs. Results: The total number of energetic ionizing photons from an accreting stellar black hole in an HMXB is comparable to the total number of ionizing photons of its progenitor star. However, the X-ray photons emitted by the accreting black hole are capable of producing several secondary ionizations and the ionizing power of the resulting black hole could be greater than that of its progenitor. Feedback by the large populations of BH-HMXBs heats the IGM to temperatures of ≈ 104 K and maintains it ionized on large distance scales. Conclusions: BH-HMXBs determine the early thermal history of the universe and maintain it as ionized over large volumes of space in regions of low density. This has a direct impact on the properties of the faintest galaxies at high redshifts, the smallest dwarf galaxies in the local universe, and on the existing and future surveys at radio wavelengths of atomic hydrogen in the early universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c88efe3fe72c83121312f7254a1d98455d06ce55

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Citations in the corpus

New Limits on 21cm EoR From PAPER-32 Consistent with an X-Ray Heated IGM at z=7.7 (2013, background): “…scattering from supernovae, high-mass X-ray binaries, or mini-quasars is the most likely culprit (Madau et al. 2004; Ricotti & Ostriker 2004; Mirabel et al. 2011; Tanaka et al. 2012), although shock heating, which is currently disfavored (McQuinn & O’Leary 2012), has not been completely…”
Signatures of X-rays in the early Universe (2012, background): “Recent interest has focused on X-rays as a possibly significant contributor to cosmic reionization (e.g. Haiman 2011; Mirabel et al. 2011; Fontanot et al. 2012).”
X-RAY BINARY EVOLUTION ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2012, background): “Furthermore, it lays the ground for future work that will study role played by XRBs in the formation and evolution of galaxies through feedback processes (e.g. Mirabel et al. 2011; Haiman 2011; Justham & Schawinski 2012).”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “In addition, X-rays from high-mass X-ray binaries (Furlanetto 2006; Mirabel et al. 2011), supernovae shocks (Johnson & Khochfar 2011), supernova-accelerated electronic cosmic rays (Oh 2001), and even more exotic processes such as dark matter annihilations (Belikov & Hooper 2009) may contribute some…”
Charting the parameter space of the global 21-cm signal (2016, background): “Out of the plethora of candidates, XRBs (which have a hard SED which peaks around 1− 3 keV) are likely to be the dominant source of cosmic heating at z & 6 (Mirabel et al. 2011; Fragos et al. 2013).”
Radiation Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn: X-Rays from Compact Binaries (2016, background): “A number of authors have addressed the possible feedback from HMXBs during galaxy formation and evolution (e.g., Cantalupo 2010; Mirabel et al. 2011; Justham & Schawinski 2012; Power et al. 2013; Fragos et al. 2013a,b; Fialkov et al. 2014; Jeon et al. 2014; Pacucci et al. 2014).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “Early BH accretion may also produce a significant fraction of the total radiation background responsible for reionization of the Universe at z >∼ 7 (e.g., Madau et al., 2004; Mirabel et al., 2011).”
Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “This may also suggest the formation of X-ray binaries at earlier cosmic times (Mirabel et al. 2011; Ryu et al. 2016).”
Ubiquitous seeding of supermassive black holes by direct collapse (2012, background): “Also, the X-ray feedback from accretion discs could heat the gas in surrounding haloes, thereby preventing themfro collapsing and making stars (e.g. Mirabel et al. 2011; Tanaket al. 2012), hindering the formation of DCBHs in the neighbouringpristine massive haloes.”
Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, background): “Moreover, radiative and mechanical feedback from HMXBs and ULXs themselves may have been an additional, important source of heating and reionization of the intergalactic medium at high redshift (Mirabel et al. 2011).”