Related papers: Enhanced direct collapse due to Lyman alpha feedba…
The thermochemistry of H2 and HD in non-collapsed, non-reionized primordial gas up to the end of the dark age is investigated with recent radiation-matter and chemical reaction rates taking into account the efficient coolant HD, and the…
The presence of quasars at redshifts z > 6 indicates the existence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) as massive as a few times 10^9 Msun, challenging models for SMBH formation. One pathway is through the direct collapse of gas in T_{vir}…
We investigate how uncertainties in the chemical and cooling rate coefficients relevant for a metal-free gas influence our ability to determine the critical ultraviolet field strength required to suppress H2 cooling in high-redshift atomic…
We study for the first time the environment of massive black hole (BH) seeds (~10^4-5 Msun) formed via the direct collapse of pristine gas clouds in massive haloes (>10^7 Msun) at z>6. Our model is based on the evolution of dark matter…
We investigate the impact of dust shielding on Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation fields and its implications for supermassive black hole (SMBH) seed formation at high redshift. Using a custom-built semi-analytical model developed specifically for…
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 $z \sim$ 20. The discovery of the Ly$\alpha$ emitter CR7 at $z =$ 6.6…
The first generation of protogalaxies likely formed out of primordial gas via H2-cooling in cosmological minihalos with virial temperatures of a few 1000K. However, their abundance is likely to have been severely limited by feedback…
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…
The first galaxies forming a few hundred million years after the Big Bang are the key drivers of cosmic evolution and ideal laboratories to study theories of galaxy formation. We here study the role of UV radiation in suppressing star…
We use numerical simulations to explore whether direct collapse can lead to the formation of SMBH seeds at high-z. We follow the evolution of gas within DM halos of 2 x 10^8 Mo and 1 kpc. We adopt cosmological density profiles and…
The first luminous objects in the concordance cosmology form by molecular hydrogen cooling in dark matter dominated halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun. We use Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement simulations to demonstrate that in the presence of a…
Recent observations have revealed that damped Ly$\alpha$ clouds (DLAs) host star formation activity. In order to examine if such star formation activity can be triggered by ionization fronts, we perform high-resolution hydrodynamics and…
We extend a previous study of Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) based on hydrodynamical cosmological simulations, by including two physical processes important for LAEs: (a) Lyman Alpha and continuum luminosities produced by cooling of…
The 21-cm signal from the epoch of cosmic dawn ($z \sim 10-30$) offers a powerful probe of new physics. One standard mechanism for constraining decaying dark matter from 21-cm observations relies on heating of the intergalactic medium by…
We use three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to investigate the effects of a transient photoionizing ultraviolet (UV) flux on the collapse and cooling of pregalactic clouds. These clouds have masses in the range 10^5 -10^7 M_sun, form…
Direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) are currently one of the leading contenders for the origins of the first quasars in the universe, over 300 of which have now been found at $z >$ 6. But the birth of a DCBH in an atomically-cooling halo…
It has been proposed that primordial gas in early dark matter halos, with virial temperatures above 10^4 K, can avoid fragmentation and undergo rapid collapse, possibly resulting in a supermassive black hole (SMBH). This requires the gas to…
Molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) and hydrogen deuteride (HD) are key coolants in primordial gas and regulate the formation of the first stars and proto-galaxies. Recent results from the James Webb Space Telescope provide striking insights into…
We propose that one of the sources in the recently detected system CR7 by Sobral et al. (2015) through spectro-photometric measurements at $z = 6.6$ harbors a direct collapse blackhole (DCBH). We argue that the LW radiation field required…
The role of HD cooling in the formation of primordial objects is examined by means of a great number of 1-D models of the collapse of halos, exploring a wide range of masses and virialization redshifts. We find that HD has very little…