English

FROST-CLUSTERS -- II. Massive stars, binaries and triples boost supermassive black hole seed formation in assembling star clusters

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-09-09 v4

Abstract

Observations and high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate that massive star clusters form through a complex hierarchical assembly. We use simulations including post-Newtonian dynamics (the BIFROST code) and stellar evolution (the SEVN module) to investigate this collisional assembly. With a full initial stellar mass function, we study the effect of initial binary, triple and massive single stars (450 MM_\odot) on the assembly, structure, and kinematics of massive (Mcl106MM_\mathrm{cl}\sim10^6 M_\odot, N=1.8×106N=1.8 \times 10^6) star clusters. Simultaneously, intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs), potential seeds for supermassive black holes, can form and grow in our models by stellar collisions, tidal disruption events (TDEs) and black hole (BH) mergers. At a fixed cluster mass, stellar multiplicity or a high mass limit increase the numbers (up to \sim 10) and masses (up to 104M10^4 M_\odot) of the formed IMBHs within the first 10 Myr of cluster evolution. The TDE rates peak at Γtde5×105\Gamma_\mathrm{tde}\sim 5 \times 10^{-5} yr1^{-1} after IMBH formation at 2\sim 2 Myr. In all simulations, we find gravitational wave driven mergers involving stellar BHs and IMBHs. Initial multiplicity or a high mass limit also result in IMBH-IMBH mergers. The IMBH masses correlate with the initial cluster masses, surface densities and velocity dispersions approximately as MMclM_\bullet \propto M_\mathrm{cl}, MΣh3/2M_\bullet\propto\Sigma_\mathrm{h}^\mathrm{3/2} and Mσ3M_\bullet\propto\sigma^\mathrm{3}. Our results suggest the dense z10z\sim10 star clusters recently observed by the James Webb Space Telescope host IMBHs with masses above M104MM_\bullet \gtrsim 10^4 M_\odot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.04330,
  title  = {FROST-CLUSTERS -- II. Massive stars, binaries and triples boost supermassive black hole seed formation in assembling star clusters},
  author = {Antti Rantala and Natalia Lahén and Thorsten Naab and Gastón J. Escobar and Giuliano Iorio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.04330},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

29 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS