English

How long do high-redshift massive black hole seeds remain outliers in black hole vs. host galaxy relations?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-12-28 v2

Abstract

The existence of 109 M10^9\ {\rm M_\odot} supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within the first billion years of the universe remains a puzzle in our conventional understanding of black hole formation and growth. Several suggested formation pathways for these SMBHs lead to a heavy seed, with an initial black hole mass of 104106 M10^4-10^6~{\rm M_\odot}. This can lead to an overly massive BH galaxy (OMBG), whose nuclear black hole's mass is comparable to or even greater than the surrounding stellar mass: the black hole to stellar mass ratio is Mbh/M103M_{\rm bh}/M_* \gg 10^{-3}, well in excess of the typical values at lower redshift. We investigate how long these newborn BHs remain outliers in the MbhMM_{\rm bh}-M_{*} relation, by exploring the subsequent evolution of two OMBGs previously identified in the \texttt{Renaissance} simulations. We find that both OMBGs have Mbh/M>1M_{\rm bh}/M_* > 1 during their entire life, from their birth at z15z\approx 15 until they merge with much more massive haloes at z8z\approx 8. We find that the OMBGs are spatially resolvable from their more massive, 1011 M10^{11}~{\rm M_\odot}, neighboring haloes until their mergers are complete at z8z\approx 8. This affords a window for future observations with {\it JWST} and sensitive X-ray telescopes to diagnose the heavy-seed scenario, by detecting similar OMBGs and establishing their uniquely high black hole-to-stellar mass ratio.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.09611,
  title  = {How long do high-redshift massive black hole seeds remain outliers in black hole vs. host galaxy relations?},
  author = {Matthew T. Scoggins and Zoltán Haiman and John H. Wise},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.09611},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

15 pages, 10 figures. Accepted in MNRAS