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Related papers: Supermassive black hole ancestors

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Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are observed in diverse galaxy populations across time yet a clear understanding of how they coevolve with their hosts has not been reached. Physically-motivated models of SMBH accretion and feedback vary…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-11-14 Bryan A. Terrazas , James Aird , Alison L. Coil

JWST has recently revealed a large population of accreting black holes (BHs) in the early Universe. Even after accounting for possible systematic biases, the high-z $M_*-M_{\rm \rm bh}$ relation derived from these objects by Pacucci et al.…

The nature of the seeds of high-redshift supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is a key question in cosmology. Direct collapse black holes (DCBH) that form in pristine, atomic-line cooling halos, illuminated by a Lyman-Werner (LW) UV flux…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-19 Mark Dijkstra , Andrea Ferrara , Andrei Mesinger

The assembly of the first super massive black holes (SMBHs) at $z \gtrsim 6$ is still a subject of intense debate. If black holes (BHs) grow at their Eddington rate, they must start from $\gtrsim 10^4 \, M_\odot$ seeds formed by the direct…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-03-03 Edwige Pezzulli , Rosa Valiante , Raffaella Schneider

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses exceeding $10^6 \mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ at redshifts $z > 8$, posing significant challenges to existing models of early black…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-22 Daxal H. Mehta , John A. Regan , Lewis Prole

Observations of luminous quasars at $z\gtrsim7$ reveal supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with inferred masses $M_{\rm BH}\sim10^9 \, M_\odot$ formed within the first $\sim700$~Myr of cosmic history. Standard growth channels \textrm{ -- }…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2026-04-21 Chian-Shu Chen , Feng-Li Lin

We report on a calculation of the growth of the mass of supermassive black holes at galactic centers from dark matter and Eddington - limited baryonic accretion. Assuming that dark matter halos are made of fermions and harbor compact…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Faustin Munyaneza , Peter L. Biermann

The origin of the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs) observed at redshifts $z\geq 9$ remains one of the most challenging open questions in astrophysics. Their rapid emergence suggests that massive ``heavy seeds'' must have formed early,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-13 Andrew D. Santarelli , Claire B. Campbell , Ebraheem Farag , Earl P. Bellinger , Priyamvada Natarajan , Matthew E. Caplan

We investigate how supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds form in the early Universe at the centers of ultralight dark matter (ULDM) halos. Focusing on the ULDM Jeans scale, we identify the critical conditions under which high-redshift…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-10 Dongsu Bak , Jae-Weon Lee

We propose a new mechanism for the growth of supermassive black hole (BH) seeds in the star-forming progenitors of local early-type galaxies (ETGs) at $z\gtrsim 1$. This envisages the migration and merging of stellar compact remnants…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-03-18 L. Boco , A. Lapi , L. Danese

The discovery of supermassive black holes with masses $\gtrsim 10^9 M_\odot$ at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10$ challenges conventional formation scenarios based on baryonic accretion and mergers within the first few hundred million years. We…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-18 Nicolas Sanchis-Gual , Juan Barranco , Juan Carlos Degollado , Darío Nuñez

We show that dark stars, which are dark-matter-powered stars in the early universe, can grow by accretion to masses in the range $\mathscr{O}\left ({10}^4\right )-\mathscr{O}\left ({10}^7\right)\,{M_\odot}$ before the general-relativistic…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-12 Katherine Freese , George M. Fuller , Sohan Ghodla , Cosmin Ilie , Kyle S. Kehrer , Tanja Rindler-Daller , Evangelos I. Sfakianakis

The high redshift ($z>10$) galaxies GHZ9 and UHZ1 observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are very massive and have exceptionally high black hole-to-star mass ratios with the central black hole masses $M\gtrsim 10^7\rm~M_\odot$.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-10-10 Hai-Long Huang , Yu-Tong Wang , Yun-Song Piao

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses of $\sim 10^9 {\rm M_\odot}$ within the first billion year of the universe challenge our conventional understanding of black hole formation and growth. One pathway to these SMBHs proposes that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-06-11 Matthew T. Scoggins , Zoltán Haiman

Massive Black Hole (MBH) seeds at redshift $z \gtrsim 10$ are now thought to be key ingredients to explain the presence of the super-massive ($10^{9-10} \, \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$) black holes in place $ < 1 \, \mathrm{Gyr}$ after the Big Bang.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-10-27 Fabio Pacucci , Andrea Ferrara , Marta Volonteri , Guillaume Dubus

Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed active galactic nuclei (AGN) powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with estimated masses of $10^7-10^8$ M$_\odot$ at redshifts $z\sim7-9$. Some reside in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-17 Junehyoung Jeon , Volker Bromm , Boyuan Liu , Steven L. Finkelstein

There is compelling evidence that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) exist. Yet the origin of these objects, or their seeds, is still unknown. We are performing general relativistic simulations of gravitational collapse to black holes in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Stuart L. Shapiro

We present a novel, few-body computational framework designed to shed light on the likelihood of forming intermediate-mass (IM) and supermassive (SM) black holes (BHs) in nuclear star clusters (NSCs) through successive BH mergers, initiated…

(Abridged) We present a simple framework for the growth and evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the hierarchical structure formation paradigm. In our model, black hole accretion is triggered during major mergers (mass…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-24 Yue Shen

Halos with masses in excess of the atomic limit are believed to be ideal environments in which to form heavy black hole seeds with masses above 10^3 Msun. In cases where the H_2 fraction is suppressed this is expected to lead to reduced…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-12-13 Lewis R. Prole , John A. Regan , Simon C. O. Glover , Ralf S. Klessen , Felix D. Priestley , Paul C. Clark