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Related papers: Finding Direct-Collapse Black Holes at Birth

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Observing the light emitted by the first accreting black holes (BHs) would dramatically improve our understanding of the formation of quasars at z > 6, possibly unveiling the nature of their supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds. In previous…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-11-26 Rosa Valiante , Raffaella Schneider , Luca Zappacosta , Luca Graziani , Edwige Pezzulli , Marta Volonteri

A near pristine atomic cooling halo close to a star forming galaxy offers a natural pathway for forming massive direct collapse black hole (DCBH) seeds which could be the progenitors of the $z>6$ redshift quasars. The close proximity of the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-07-26 Bhaskar Agarwal , John Regan , Ralf S. Klessen , Turlough P. Downes , Erik Zackrisson

Overmassive black hole galaxies (OBGs) at redshifts $z \sim$ 10, or 450 Myr after the Big Bang, are one of the most puzzling discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope to date because they formed by such early epochs and their black-hole…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-05 Muhammad A. Latif , Daniel J. Whalen , Sadegh Khochfar , Fergus Cullen

The detection of $\rm z>6$ quasars reveals the existence of supermassive black holes of a few $\rm 10^9~M_{\odot}$. One of the potential pathways to explain their formation in the infant universe is the so-called direct collapse model which…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-02-17 Muhammad A. Latif , Dominik R. G. Schleicher , Tilman Hartwig

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…

Observations of the most luminous quasars at high redshifts ($z > 6$) have revealed that the largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at those epochs tend to be substantially overmassive relative to their host galaxies compared to the local…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-09-01 Haojie Hu , Kohei Inayoshi , Zoltán Haiman , Wenxiu Li , Eliot Quataert , Rolf Kuiper

Space telescope observations of massive black holes during their formation may be key to understanding the origin of supermassive black holes and high-redshift quasars. To create diagnostics for their detection and confirmation, we study a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-09-12 Kirk S. S. Barrow , Aycin Aykutalp , John H. Wise

Growing the supermassive black holes (~10^9 Msun) that power the detected luminous, highest redshift quasars (z > 6) from light seeds - the remnants of the first stars - within ~ 1 Gyr of the Big Bang poses a timing challenge for growth…

Direct collapse within dark matter (DM) halos is a promising path to form supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds at high redshifts. The outer part of this collapse remains optically thin, and has been studied intensively using numerical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-04-13 Yang Luo , Kazem Ardaneh , Isaac Shlosman , Kentaro Nagamine , John Wise , Mitchell Begelman

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

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of $\sim 10^9\, M_\odot$ are generally believed to be the central engines of the luminous quasars observed at $z\gtrsim6$, but their astrophysical origin remains elusive. The $z\gtrsim$ quasars reside in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-12-04 Qirong Zhu , Yuexing Li , Yiting Li , Moupiya Maji , Hidenobu Yajima , Raffaella Schneider , Lars Hernquist

We consider a scenario where supermassive black holes form through direct accumulation of gas at the centre of proto-galaxies. In the first stage, the accumulated gas forms a super-massive star whose core collapses when the nuclear fuel is…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-28 Calanit Dotan , Elena M. Rossi , Nir J. Shaviv

While large numbers of supermassive black holes have been detected at z>6, their origin is still essentially unclear. Numerical simulations have shown that the conditions for the classical direct collapse scenario are very restrictive and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-04-13 D. R. G. Schleicher , B. Reinoso , M. Latif , R. S. Klessen , M. Z. C. Vergara , A. Das , P. Alister , V. B. Díaz , P. A. Solar

Direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) formed from the collapse of atomically-cooled primordial gas in the early Universe are strong candidates for the seeds of supermassive BHs. DCBHs are thought to form in atomic cooling haloes in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-10-16 Jarrett L. Johnson , Daniel J. Whalen , Bhaskar Agarwal , Jan-Pieter Paardekooper , Sadegh Khochfar

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…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-04 Zoltán Haiman

The growth of the most massive black holes in the early universe, consistent with the detection of highly luminous quasars at $z> 6$ implies sustained, critical accretion of material to grow and power them. Given a black hole seed scenario,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-03-29 Tiziana Di Matteo , Rupert A. C. Croft , Yu Feng , Dacen Waters , Stephen Wilkins

Direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) are an important component of the massive black hole population of the early universe, and their formation and early mergers will be prominent in the data stream of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-12-23 Bernard J. Kelly , Sarah Gossan , Leonardo R. Werneck , John Wise , Zachariah B. Etienne , Thiago Assumpção , Aláine Lee , John G. Baker

We propose a model in which intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with mass of ~10000 Msun are formed in early dark matter halos. We carry out detailed stellar evolution calculations for accreting primordial stars including annihilation…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 Hideyuki Umeda , Naoki Yoshida , Ken Nomoto , Sachiko Tsuruta , Mei Sasaki , Takuya Ohkubo

The direct collapse black hole (DCBH) model attempts to explain the observed number density of supermassive black holes in the early Universe by positing that they grew from seed black holes with masses of $10^{4}$-$10^{5} \: {\rm…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-10-19 Simon C. O. Glover

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-28 Ezequiel Treister , Kevin Schawinski , Marta Volonteri , Priyamvada Natarajan , Eric Gawiser