Did supermassive black holes form by direct collapse?
Astrophysics
2008-11-26 v1
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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0709.0545,
title = {Did supermassive black holes form by direct collapse?},
author = {Mitchell C. Begelman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.0545},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "First Stars III", proceedings of the conference in Santa Fe, NM, July 16-20, 2007, eds. B. O'Shea, A. Heger and T. Abel. AIP Conference Proceedings