What is the origin of the JWST SMBHs?

John Ellis; Malcolm Fairbairn; Juan Urrutia; Ville Vaskonen

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202555389

What is the origin of the JWST SMBHs?

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-11-19 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Authors: John Ellis , Malcolm Fairbairn , Juan Urrutia , Ville Vaskonen

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Abstract

We present a new semi-analytical model for the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that is based on the extended Press-Schechter formalism and phenomenological modelling of star formation. The model yields BH mass-stellar mass relations that reproduce both the JWST and pre-JWST observations. If the efficiency for BH mergers is high the JWST data prefer light seeds while the pre-JWST data prefers heavy seeds. The fit improves for a smaller merger efficiency, $O(0.1)$ , for which both data prefer heavy seeds, while also accommodating the PTA GW background data.

Keywords

supermassive black holes JWST observations Press-Schechter formalism BH-galaxy co-evolution seed mass models

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.24224,
  title  = {What is the origin of the JWST SMBHs?},
  author = {John Ellis and Malcolm Fairbairn and Juan Urrutia and Ville Vaskonen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.24224},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

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