No Arabic abstract
Supermassive stars (SMSs) with mass $sim10^{5}~rm{M}_{odot}$ are promising candidates for the origin of supermassive black holes observed at redshift $gtrsim6$. They are supposed to form as a result of rapid accretion of primordial gas, although it can be obstructed by the time variation caused by circum-stellar disc fragmentation due to gravitational instability. To assess the occurrence of fragmentation, we study the structure of marginally gravitationally unstable accretion discs, by using a steady one-dimensional thin disc model with detailed treatment of chemical and thermal processes. Motivated by two SMS formation scenarios, i.e., those with strong ultraviolet radiation background or with large velocity difference between the baryon and the dark matter, we consider two types of flows, i.e., atomic and molecular flows, respectively, for a wide range of the central stellar mass $10-10^5~rm{M}_{odot}$ and the accretion rate $10^{-3}-1~rm{M}_{odot}~rm{yr}^{-1}$. In the case of a mostly atomic gas flowing to the disc outer boundary, the fragmentation condition is expressed as the accretion rate being higher than the critical value of $10^{-1}~rm{M}_{odot}~rm{yr}^{-1}$ regardless of the central stellar mass. On the other hand, in the case of molecular flows, there is a critical disc radius outside of which the disc becomes unstable. Those conditions appears to be marginally satisfied according to numerical simulations, suggesting that disc fragmentation can be common during SMS formation.
We investigate how a protoplanetary discs susceptibility to gravitational instabilities and fragmentation depends on the mass of its host star. We use 1D disc models in conjunction with 3D SPH simulations to determine the critical disc-to-star mass ratios at which discs become unstable against fragmentation, finding that discs become increasingly prone to the effects of self-gravity as we increase the host star mass. The actual limit for stability is sensitive to the disc temperature, so if the disc is optically thin stellar irradiation can dramatically stabilise discs against gravitational instability. However, even when this is the case we find that discs around $2$M$_{odot}$ stars are prone to fragmentation, which will act to produce wide-orbit giant planets and brown dwarfs. The consequences of this work are two-fold: that low mass stars could in principle support high disc-to-star mass ratios, and that higher mass stars have discs that are more prone to fragmentation, which is qualitatively consistent with observations that favour high-mass wide-orbit planets around higher mass stars. We also find that the initial masses of these planets depends on the temperature in the disc at large radii, which itself depends on the level of stellar irradiation.
Supermassive stars (SMSs) with $sim10^{4-5}~mathrm{M}_{odot}$ are candidate objects for the origin of supermassive black holes observed at redshift $z$>6. They are supposed to form in primordial-gas clouds that provide the central stars with gas at a high accretion rate, but their growth may be terminated in the middle due to the stellar ionizing radiation if the accretion is intermittent and its quiescent periods are longer than the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) timescales at the stellar surfaces. In this paper, we examine the role of the ionizing radiation feedback based on the accretion history in two possible SMS-forming clouds extracted from cosmological simulations, following their evolution with vertically-integrated two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations with detailed thermal and chemical models. The consistent treatment of the gas thermal evolution is crucial for obtaining the realistic accretion history, as we demonstrate by performing an additional run with a barotropic equation of state, in which the fluctuation of the accretion rate is artificially suppressed. We find that although the accretion becomes intermittent due to the formation of spiral arms and clumps in gravitationally unstable disks, the quiescent periods are always shorter than the KH timescales, implying that SMSs can form without affected by the ionizing radiation.
Direct imaging searches have revealed many very low-mass objects, including a small number of planetary mass objects, as wide-orbit companions to young stars. The formation mechanism of these objects remains uncertain. In this paper we present the predictions of the disc fragmentation model regarding the properties of the discs around such low-mass objects. We find that the discs around objects that have formed by fragmentation in discs hosted by Sun-like stars (referred to as parent discs and parent stars) are more massive than expected from the ${M}_{rm disc}-M_*$ relation (which is derived for stars with masses $M_*>0.2 {rm M}_{odot}$). Accordingly, the accretion rates onto these objects are also higher than expected from the $dot{M}_*-M_*$ relation. Moreover there is no significant correlation between the mass of the brown dwarf or planet with the mass of its disc nor with the accretion rate from the disc onto it. The discs around objects that form by disc fragmentation have larger than expected masses as they accrete gas from the disc of their parent star during the first few kyr after they form. The amount of gas that they accrete and therefore their mass depend on how they move in their parent disc and how they interact with it. Observations of disc masses and accretion rates onto very low-mass objects are consistent with the predictions of the disc fragmentation model. Future observations (e.g. by ALMA) of disc masses and accretion rates onto substellar objects that have even lower masses (young planets and young, low-mass brown dwarfs), where the scaling relations predicted by the disc fragmentation model diverge significantly from the corresponding relations established for higher-mass stars, will test the predictions of this model.
The formation of supermassive stars (SMSs) via rapid mass accretion and their direct collapse into black holes (BHs) is a promising pathway for sowing seeds of supermassive BHs in the early universe. We calculate the evolution of rapidly accreting SMSs by solving the stellar structure equations including nuclear burning as well as general relativistic (GR) effects up to the onset of the collapse. We find that such SMSs have less concentrated structure than fully-convective counterpart, which is often postulated for non-accreting ones. This effect stabilizes the stars against GR instability even above the classical upper mass limit $gtrsim 10^5~M_odot$ derived for the fully-convective stars. The accreting SMS begins to collapse at the higher mass with the higher accretion rate. The collapse occurs when the nuclear fuel is exhausted only for cases with $dot M lesssim 0.1~M_odot~{rm yr}^{-1}$. With $dot{M} simeq 0.3 - 1~M_odot~{rm yr}^{-1}$, the star becomes GR-unstable during the helium-burning stage at $M simeq 2 - 3.5~times 10^5~M_odot$. In an extreme case with $10~M_odot~{rm yr}^{-1}$, the star does not collapse until the mass reaches $simeq 8.0times 10^5~M_odot$, where it is still in the hydrogen-burning stage. We expect that BHs with roughly the same mass will be left behind after the collapse in all the cases.
We use a suite of SPH simulations to investigate the susceptibility of protoplanetary discs to the effects of self-gravity as a function of star-disc properties. We also include passive irradiation from the host star using different models for the stellar luminosities. The critical disc-to-star mass ratio for axisymmetry (for which we produce criteria) increases significantly for low-mass stars. This could have important consequences for increasing the potential mass reservoir in a proto Trappist-1 system, since even the efficient Ormel et al. (2017) formation model will be influenced by processes like external photoevaporation, which can rapidly and dramatically deplete the dust reservoir. The aforementioned scaling of the critical $M_d/M_*$ for axisymmetry occurs in part because the Toomre $Q$ parameter has a linear dependence on surface density (which promotes instability) and only an $M_*^{1/2}$ dependence on shear (which reduces instability), but also occurs because, for a given $M_d/M_*$, the thermal evolution depends on the host star mass. The early phase stellar irradiation of the disc (for which the luminosity is much higher than at the zero age main sequence, particularly at low stellar masses) can also play a key role in significantly reducing the role of self-gravity, meaning that even Solar mass stars could support axisymmetric discs a factor two higher in mass than usually considered possible. We apply our criteria to the DSHARP discs with spirals, finding that self-gravity can explain the observed spirals so long as the discs are optically thick to the host star irradiation.