English

Radio Power from a Direct-Collapse Black Hole in CR7

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-02-02 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

The leading contenders for the seeds of the first quasars are direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) formed during catastrophic baryon collapse in atomically-cooled halos at zz \sim 20. The discovery of the Lyα\alpha emitter CR7 at z=z = 6.6 was initially held to be the first detection of a DCBH, although this interpretation has since been challenged on the grounds of Spitzer IRAC and Very Large Telescope X-Shooter data. Here we determine if radio flux from a DCBH in CR7 could be detected and discriminated from competing sources of radio emission in the halo such as young supernovae and H II regions. We find that a DCBH would emit a flux of 10 - 200 nJy at 1.0 GHz, far greater than the sub-nJy signal expected for young supernovae but on par with continuum emission from star-forming regions. However, radio emission from a DCBH in CR7 could be distinguished from free-free emission from H II regions by its spectral evolution with frequency and could be detected by the Square Kilometer Array in the coming decade.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.04167,
  title  = {Radio Power from a Direct-Collapse Black Hole in CR7},
  author = {Daniel J. Whalen and Mar Mezcua and Avery Meiksin and Tilman Hartwig and Muhammad A. Latif},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.04167},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJL