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Related papers: The Formation of the First Massive Black Holes

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Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are common in local galactic nuclei, and SMBHs as massive as several billion solar masses already exist at redshift z=6. These earliest SMBHs may arise by the combination of Eddington-limited growth and…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-19 Zoltán Haiman

Observations of distant bright quasars suggest that billion solar mass supermassive black holes (SMBHs) were already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Models in which light black hole seeds form by the collapse of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-14 Lucio Mayer , Stelios Kazantzidis , Andres Escala , Simone Callegari

The existence of $\approx$10^9 Msun supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within the first billion year of the universe has stimulated numerous ideas for the prompt formation and rapid growth of BHs in the early universe. Here we review ways in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-11-11 Kohei Inayoshi , Eli Visbal , Zoltán Haiman

The recent observations of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshift challenge our understanding of their formation and growth. There are different proposed pathways to form black hole (BH) seeds, such as the remnants of the first…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-01-22 Tilman Hartwig

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth plausibly occurs via runaway astrophysical black hole mergers in nuclear star clusters that form intermediate mass black hole seeds at high redshifts. Such a model yields an order-of-magnitude higher…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-18 Konstantinos Kritos , Joseph Silk

The origin of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) remains a long-standing problem in astrophysics. Recent JWST observations reveal an unexpectedly abundant population of overmassive black holes at z>4-6, where the BH masses lie far above local…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-09 Sunmyon Chon , Shingo Hirano , Tomoaki Ishiyama , Seok-Jun Chang , Volker Springel

We investigate the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshift ($z \ge 10$) from a combination of dark matter capture, black-hole mergers, and gas accretion. It has previously been shown that SMBHs can form by $z \approx 10$…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-14 Andrew Imai , Grant J. Mathews , Guobao Tang , Brian Zhang

Recent observations of the high-redshift universe have uncovered a significant number of active galactic nuclei, implying that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) would have to have been formed at much earlier times than expected. Direct…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-06-13 Yifan Lu , Zachary S. C. Picker , Alexander Kusenko

The presence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshifts ($z>5$), as revealed by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), challenges standard black hole (BH) formation scenarios. We propose a mechanism in which non-annihilating dark…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2026-01-05 Sulagna Bhattacharya , Debajit Bose , Basudeb Dasgupta , Jaya Doliya , Ranjan Laha

We examine the formation of groups of multiple supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in gas-poor galactic nuclei due to the high merger rate of galaxies at high redshifts. We calculate the relative likelihood of binary, triple, and quadruple…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Girish Kulkarni , Abraham Loeb

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are a ubiquitous component of the nuclei of galaxies. It is normally assumed that, following the merger of two massive galaxies, a SMBH binary will form, shrink due to stellar or gas dynamical processes and…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-07-14 Lucio Mayer , Stelios Kazantzidis , Piero Madau , Monica Colpi , Thomas Quinn , James Wadsley

We discuss a model for the early assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark halo `merger tree'. Motivated by the observations of luminous quasars around…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Marta Volonteri , Martin J. Rees

Massive Primordial Black Holes (MPBH) can be formed after inflation due to broad peaks in the primordial curvature power spectrum that collapse gravitationally during the radiation era, to form clusters of black holes that merge and…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2017-06-28 Juan García-Bellido

One of the most promising explanations for the origin of the billion solar mass black holes (BHs) inferred to power quasars at redshifts z > 6 is that supermassive stars (SMSs) with masses > 10,000 solar masses collapse to form the seed BHs…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-05 Jarrett L. Johnson , Bhaskar Agarwal , Daniel J. Whalen , Claudio Dalla Vecchia , Christopher L. Fryer , Sadegh Khochfar , Hui Li , Mario Livio

We investigate a hierarchical structure formation scenario describing the evolution of a Super Massive Black Holes (SMBHs) population. The seeds of the local SMBHs are assumed to be 'pregalactic' black holes, remnants of the first POPIII…

Astrophysics · Physics 2017-03-29 M. Volonteri , F. Haardt , P. Madau , A. Sesana

The emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early universe remains a topic of profound interest and debate. In this paper, we investigate the formation and growth of the first SMBHs within the framework of Modified Gravity…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-03-12 Mohammad H. Zhoolideh Haghighi , John Moffat

Recent James Webb Space Telescope observations have unveiled that the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs) were in place at z $\geq$ 10, a few hundred Myrs after the Big Bang. These discoveries are providing strong constraints on the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-01-31 Muhammad A. Latif , Sadegh Khochfar

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

We assess models for the assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark halo `merger tree'. We assume that the first `seed' black holes (BHs) formed in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Marta Volonteri , Francesco Haardt , Piero Madau

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are nowadays believed to reside in most local galaxies, and the available data show an empirical correlation between bulge luminosity - or stellar velocity dispersion - and black hole mass, suggesting a…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Marta Volonteri
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