No Arabic abstract
Rapid infall of gas in the nuclei of galaxies could lead to the formation of black holes by direct collapse, without first forming stars. Black holes formed in this way would have initial masses of a few solar masses, but would be embedded in massive envelopes that would allow them to grow at a highly super-Eddington rate. Thus, seed black holes as large as 10^3-10^4 solar masses could form very rapidly. I will sketch the basic physics of the direct collapse process and the properties of the accreting envelopes.
We propose a mechanism of producing a new type of primordial perturbations that collapse to primordial black holes whose mass can be as large as necessary for them to grow to the supermassive black holes observed at high redshifts, without contradicting COBE/FIRAS upper limits on cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortions. In our model, the observable Universe consists of two kinds of many small patches which experienced different expansion histories during inflation. Primordial perturbations large enough to form primordial black holes are realized on patches that experienced more Hubble expansion than the others. By making these patches the minor component, the rarity of supermassive black holes can be explained. On the other hand, most regions of the Universe experienced the standard history and, hence, only have standard almost-scale-invariant adiabatic perturbations confirmed by observations of CMB or large-scale structures of the Universe. Thus, our mechanism can evade the constraint from the nondetection of the CMB distortion set by the COBE/FIRAS measurement. Our model predicts the existence of supermassive black holes even at redshifts much higher than those observed. Hence, our model can be tested by future observations peeking into the higher-redshift Universe.
Binary black holes as the recently detected sources of gravitational waves can be formed from massive stellar binaries in the field or by dynamical interactions in clusters of high stellar density, if the black holes are the remnants of massive stars that collapsed without natal kicks that would disrupt the binary system or eject the black holes from the cluster before binary black hole formation. Here are summarized and discussed the kinematics in three dimensions of space of five Galactic black hole X-ray binaries. For Cygnus X-1 and GRS 1915+105 it is found that the black holes of ~15 and ~10 solar masses in these sources were formed in situ, without energetic kicks. These observations suggest that binary black holes with components of ~10 solar masses may have been prolifically produced in the universe.
One of the ideas to explain the existence of supermassive black holes (SMBH) that are in place by z~7 is that there was an earlier phase of very rapid accretion onto direct collapse black holes (DCBH) that started their lives with masses ~ 10^4-10^5 M_solar. Working in this scenario, we show that the mass function of SMBH after such a limited time period with growing formation rate paired with super-Eddington accretion can be described as a broken power-law with two characteristic features. There is a power-law at intermediate masses whose index is the dimensionless ratio {alpha} = {lambda}/{gamma}, where {lambda} is the growth rate of the number of DCBH during their formation era, and {gamma} is the growth rate of DCBH masses by super-Eddington accretion during the DCBH growth era. A second feature is a break in the power law profile at high masses, above which the mass function declines rapidly. The location of the break is related to the dimensionless number b{eta} = {gamma} T, where T is the duration of the period of DCBH growth. If the SMBH continue to grow at later times at an Eddington-limited accretion rate, then the observed quasar luminosity function can be directly related to the tapered power-law function derived in this paper.
We analyze the early growth stage of direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) with $sim 10^{5} rm M_odot$, which are formed by collapse of supermassive stars in atomic-cooling halos at $z gtrsim 10$. A nuclear accretion disk around a newborn DCBH is gravitationally unstable and fragments into clumps with a few $10 rm M_odot$ at $sim 0.01-0.1 rm pc$ from the center. Such clumps evolve into massive population III stars with a few $10-100 rm M_odot$ via successive gas accretion and a nuclear star cluster is formed. Radiative and mechanical feedback from an inner slim disk and the star cluster will significantly reduce the gas accretion rate onto the DCBH within $sim 10^6 rm yr$. Some of the nuclear stars can be scattered onto the loss cone orbits also within $lesssim 10^6 rm yr$ and tidally disrupted by the central DCBH. The jet luminosity powered by such tidal disruption events can be $L_{rm j} gtrsim 10^{50} rm erg s^{-1}$. The prompt emission will be observed in X-ray bands with a peak duration of $delta t_{rm obs} sim 10^{5-6} (1+z) rm s$ followed by a tail $propto t_{rm obs}^{-5/3}$, which can be detectable by Swift BAT and eROSITA even from $z sim 20$. Follow-up observations of the radio afterglows with, e.g., eVLA and the host halos with JWST could probe the earliest AGN feedback from DCBHs.
Direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) are currently one of the leading contenders for the origins of the first quasars in the universe, over 300 of which have now been found at $z >$ 6. But the birth of a DCBH in an atomically-cooling halo does not by itself guarantee it will become a quasar by $z sim$ 7, the halo must also be located in cold accretion flows or later merge with a series of other gas-rich halos capable of fueling the BHs rapid growth. Here, we present near infrared luminosities for DCBHs born in cold accretion flows in which they are destined to grow to 10$^9$ M$_{odot}$ by $z sim$ 7. Our observables, which are derived from cosmological simulations with radiation hydrodynamics with Enzo, reveal that DCBHs could be found by the James Webb Space Telescope at $z lesssim$ 20 and strongly-lensed DCBHs might be found in future wide-field surveys by Euclid and the Wide-Field Infrared Space Telescope at $z lesssim$ 15.