Related papers: Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe
The existence of massive black holes was postulated in the sixties, when the first quasars were discovered. In the late nineties their reality was proven beyond doubt, in the Milky way and a handful nearby galaxies. Since then, enormous…
The first massive astrophysical black holes likely formed at high redshifts (z>10) at the centers of low mass (~10^6 Msun) dark matter concentrations. These black holes grow by mergers and gas accretion, evolve into the population of bright…
The next generation of electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories will open unprecedented windows to the birth of the first supermassive black holes. This has the potential to reveal their origin and growth in the first billion…
We review recent theoretical results on the formation of the first stars and quasars in the universe, and emphasize related open questions. In particular, we list important differences between the star formation process at high redshifts…
A mechanism of creation of stellar-like objects in the very early universe, from the QCD phase transition till BBN and somewhat later, is studied. It is argued that in the considered process primordial black holes with masses above a few…
We discuss the formation of supermassive black holes in the early universe, and how to probe their subsequent evolution with the upcoming mm/sub-mm telescope ALMA. We first focus on the chemical and radiative conditions for black hole…
The first stars to form in the history of the universe may have been powered by dark matter annihilation rather than by fusion. This new phase of stellar evolution may have lasted millions to billions of years. These dark stars can grow to…
With detections of quasars powered by increasingly massive black holes (BHs) at increasingly early times in cosmic history over the past decade, there has been correspondingly rapid progress made on the theory of early BH formation and…
Observations made using large ground-based and space-borne telescopes have probed cosmic history all the way from the present-day to a time when the Universe was less than a tenth of its present age. Earlier on lies the remaining frontier,…
The most massive black holes, lurking at the centers of large galaxies, must have formed less than a billion years after the big bang, as they are visible today in the form of bright quasars at redshift larger than six. Their early…
Supermassive black holes have generally been recognized as the most destructive force in nature. But in recent years, they have undergone a dramatic shift in paradigm. These objects may have been critical to the formation of structure in…
A review of the astronomical data of several last years on an astonishingly high amount of black holes in the contemporary and early ($z\sim 10$) universe is presented. Also the data on the recently observed peculiar stars in the Galaxy are…
The origin of super-massive black holes in the early universe remains poorly understood.Gravitational collapse of a massive primordial gas cloud is a promising initial process,but theoretical studies have difficulty growing the black hole…
The most massive black holes at redshifts z = 6 were already over billion solar masses. In this chapter, we discuss the formation and growth of the first black holes in the Universe. The deaths of massive primordial stars provide potential…
The discovery of high redshift quasars represents a challenge to the origin of supermassive black holes. Here, two evolutionary scenarios are considered. The first one concerns massive black holes in the local universe, which in a large…
The formation of the first massive objects in the infant Universe remains impossible to observe directly and yet it sets the stage for the subsequent evolution of galaxies. While some black holes with masses > billion solar masses? have…
The statistics of black holes and their masses strongly suggests that their mass distribution has a cutoff towards lower masses near $3 \times 10^{6}$ M$_{\odot}$. This is consistent with a classical formation mechanism from the…
The first stars are believed to have formed a few hundred million years after the big bang in so-called dark matter minihalos with masses ~10^6 M_sun. Their radiation lit up the Universe for the first time, and the supernova explosions that…
Recent observations have shown that, only a billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was already lit up by bright quasars fuelled by the infall of gas onto supermassive black holes. The masses of these early black holes are inferred…
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 grow by the combination of radiation-pressure-limited…