Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/31563
Title: | Light, medium-weight, or heavy? The nature of the first supermassive black hole seeds | Authors: | SASSANO, FEDERICA Schneider, Raffaella VALIANTE, ROSA Inayoshi, Kohei Chon, Sunmyon Omukai, Kazuyuki Mayer, Lucio Capelo, Pedro R. |
Issue Date: | 2021 | Journal: | MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY | Number: | 506 | Issue: | 1 | First Page: | 613 | Abstract: | Observations of hyper-luminous quasars at z>6 reveal the rapid growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs ${\gt}10^9 \,\rm M_{\odot }$) whose origin is still difficult to explain. Their progenitors may have formed as remnants of massive, metal-free stars (light seeds), via stellar collisions (medium-weight seeds) and/or massive gas clouds direct collapse (heavy seeds). In this work, we investigate for the first time the relative role of these three seed populations in the formation of z>6 SMBHs within an Eddington-limited gas accretion scenario. To this aim, we implement in our semi-analytical data-constrained model a statistical description of the spatial fluctuations of Lyman-Werner (LW) photodissociating radiation and of metal/dust enrichment. This allows us to set the physical conditions for black hole seeds formation, exploring their relative birth rate in a highly biased region of the Universe at z>6. We find that the inclusion of medium-weight seeds does not qualitatively change the growth history of the first SMBHs: although less massive seeds (${\lt}10^3\, \rm M_\odot$) form at a higher rate, the mass growth of a ${\sim}10^9\, \rm M_\odot$ SMBH at z<15 is driven by efficient gas accretion (at a sub-Eddington rate) on to its heavy progenitors ($10^5\, \rm M_\odot$). This conclusion holds independently of the critical level of LW radiation and even when medium-weight seeds are allowed to form in higher metallicity galaxies, via the so-called supercompetitive accretion scenario. Our study suggests that the genealogy of z~6 SMBHs is characterized by a rich variety of BH progenitors, which represent only a small fraction (${\lt} 10{-}20{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$) of all the BHs that seed galaxies at z>15. | URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/31563 | URL: | https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/506/1/613/6307026?login=true http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.08330v1 |
ISSN: | 0035-8711 | DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/stab1737 | Bibcode ADS: | 2021MNRAS.506..613S | Fulltext: | open |
Appears in Collections: | 1.01 Articoli in rivista |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
sassano2021.pdf | preprint | 2.79 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
stab1737.pdf | Pdf editoriale | 5.31 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Items in DSpace are published in Open Access, unless otherwise indicated.