Cosmic Backgrounds from Miniquasars
Astrophysics
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
A large population of Intermediate Mass Black Holes (IMBHs) might be produced at early cosmic times as a left over of the evolution of the very massive first stars. Accretion onto IMBHs provides a source of (re)ionizing radiation. We show that the baryon mass fraction locked into IMBHs and their growth is strongly constrained by the observed residual Soft X-ray Background (SXRB) intensity. Thus, unless they are extremely X-ray quiet, miniquasars must be quite rare and/or have a short shining phase. As a byproduct, we find that miniquasars can not be the only source of reionization and that their alleged contribution to the near infrared bands is completely negligible.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0507208,
title = {Cosmic Backgrounds from Miniquasars},
author = {R. Salvaterra and F. Haardt and A. Ferrara},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0507208},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, MNRAS in press