English

Supercritical growth pathway to overmassive black holes at cosmic dawn: coevolution with massive quasar hosts

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-09-01 v2

Abstract

Observations of the most luminous quasars at high redshifts (z>6z > 6) have revealed that the largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at those epochs tend to be substantially overmassive relative to their host galaxies compared to the local relations, suggesting they experienced rapid early growth phases. We propose an assembly model for the SMBHs that end up in rare massive 1012 M\sim10^{12}~M_{\odot} host halos at z67z \sim 6-7, applying a kinetic feedback prescription for BHs accreting above the Eddington rate, provided by radiation hydrodynamic simulations for the long-term evolution of the accretion-flow structure. The large inflow rates into these halos during their assembly enable the formation of >109 M>10^9~M_{\odot} SMBHs by z6z \sim 6, even starting from stellar-mass seeds at z30z \sim 30, and even in the presence of outflows that reduce the BH feeding rate, especially at early times. This mechanism also naturally yields a high BH-to-galaxy mass ratio of >0.01> 0.01 before the SMBH mass reaches MBH>109 MM_{\rm BH} > 10^9~M_{\odot} by z6z \sim 6. These fast-growing SMBH progenitors are bright enough to be detected by upcoming observations with the James Webb Space Telescope over a wide range of redshift (7<z<157 < z < 15), regardless of how they were seeded.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.12513,
  title  = {Supercritical growth pathway to overmassive black holes at cosmic dawn: coevolution with massive quasar hosts},
  author = {Haojie Hu and Kohei Inayoshi and Zoltán Haiman and Wenxiu Li and Eliot Quataert and Rolf Kuiper},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.12513},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ