Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Extragalactic Globular Clusters
Abstract
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) have masses of about 100 to 100,000 solar masses. They remain elusive. Observing IMBHs in present-day globular clusters (GCs) would validate a formation channel for seed black holes in the early universe and inform event predictions for gravitational wave facilities. Reaching a large number of GCs per galaxy is key, as models predict that only a few percent will have retained their gravitational-wave fostering IMBHs. Related, many galaxies will need to be examined to establish a robust sample of IMBHs in GCs. These needs can be meet by using a next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) to search for IMBHs in the GCs of hundreds of galaxies out to a distance of 25 Mpc. These galaxies hold tens of thousands of GCs in total. We describe how to convert an ngVLA signal from a GC to an IMBH mass according to a semi-empirical accretion model. Simulations of gas flows in GCs would help to improve the robustness of the conversion. Also, self-consistent dynamical models of GCs, with stellar and binary evolution in the presence of IMBHs, would help to improve IMBH retention predictions for present-day GCs.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.04902,
title = {Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Extragalactic Globular Clusters},
author = {Joan M. Wrobel and Zoltan Haiman and Kelly Holley-Bockelmann and Kohei Inayoshi and Joe Lazio and Tom Maccarone and James Miller-Jones and Kristina Nyland and Rich Plotkin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.04902},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
7 pages; 2 figures; an Astro2020 Science White Paper. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1806.06052