Related papers: Finding Direct-Collapse Black Holes at Birth
Quasars are high-luminosity active galactic nuclei believed to be powered by accretion of interstellar matter onto a super-massive black hole (SMBH) therein. Most of the observed energy is released in an accretion disk of inspiralling gas…
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…
We study the influence of a high baryonic streaming velocity on the formation of direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) with the help of cosmological simulations carried out using the moving mesh code {\sc arepo}. We show that a streaming…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) may form in the early stages of the Universe via the collapse of large density perturbations. Depending on the formation mechanism, PBHs may exist and populate today the galactic halos and have masses in a wide…
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…
Observations of high-redshift quasars at z>6 imply that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses over a billion solar masses were in place less than 1 Gyr after the Big Bang. If these SMBHs assembled from "seed" BHs left behind by the…
In this paper, we explore the possibility of accreting primordial black holes as the source of heating for the collapsing gas in the context of the direct collapse black hole scenario for the formation of super-massive black holes (SMBHs)…
Injecting 1-13.6 eV photons into the early universe can suppress the molecular hydrogen abundance and alter the star formation history dramatically enough to produce direct collapse black holes. These, in turn, could explain the recently…
There is controversy surrounding the origin and evolution of our universe's largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In this study, we consider the possibility that some of these black holes formed from the direct collapse of primordial…
Super-Eddington accretion onto massive black hole seeds may be commonplace in the early Universe, where the conditions exist for rapid accretion. Direct collapse black holes are often invoked as a possible solution to the observation of…
If primordial black holes (PBHs) formed at the quark-hadron epoch, their mass must be close to the Chandrasekhar limit, this also being the characteristic mass of stars. If they provide the dark matter (DM), the collapse fraction must be of…
One of the leading contenders for the origin of supermassive black holes at $z \gtrsim$ 7 is catastrophic baryon collapse in atomically-cooled halos at $z \sim$ 15. In this scenario, a few protogalaxies form in the presence of strong…
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…
The Sloan Digital Sky survey detected luminous quasars at very high redshift, z>6. Follow-up observations indicated that at least some of these quasars are powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses in excess of billion solar…
Massive $10^{4-5}\rm\ M_{\odot}$ black hole seeds resulting from the \textit{direct} collapse of pristine gas require a metal-free atomic cooling halo with extremely low H$_2$ fraction, allowing the gas to cool isothermally in the presence…
We explore the observational implications of a model in which primordial black holes (PBHs) with a broad birth mass function ranging in mass from a fraction of a solar mass to $\sim$10$^6$ M$_{\odot}$, consistent with current observational…
Recent James Webb Space Telescope observations of high-redshift massive galaxy candidates have initiated renewed interest in the important mystery around the formation and evolution of our Universe's largest supermassive black holes…
Observational constraints on the birth and early evolution of massive black holes (BHs) come from two extreme regimes. At high redshift, quasars signal the rapid growth of billion-solar-mass BHs and indicate that these objects began…
Observations with WFC3/IR on the Hubble Space Telescope and the use of gravitational lensing techniques have facilitated the discovery of galaxies as far back as z ~ 10-12, a truly remarkable achievement. However, this rapid emergence of…
We have obtained deep, multi-band imaging observations around three of the most distant known quasars at redshifts z>6. Standard accretion theory predicts that the supermassive black holes present in these quasars were formed at a very…