Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers

Details Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers

2009-12-22

arxiv.org/abs/0912.4262v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

26 pages, 4 Figures, submitted to Nature (includes Supplementary Information)

Scientific paper

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 primordial metal-free stars cannot explain their rapid appearance due to inefficient gas accretion. Alternatively, these black holes may form by direct collapse of gas at the center of protogalaxies. However, this requires metal-free gas that does not cool efficiently and thus is not turned into stars, in contrast with the rapid metal enrichment of protogalaxies. Here we use a numerical simulation to show that mergers between massive protogalaxies naturally produce the required central gas accumulation with no need to suppress star formation. Merger-driven gas inflows produce an unstable, massive nuclear gas disk. Within the disk a second gas inflow accumulates more than 100 million solar masses of gas in a sub-parsec scale cloud in one hundred thousand years. The cloud undergoes gravitational collapse, which eventually leads to the formation of a massive black hole. The black hole can grow to a billion solar masses in less than a billion years by accreting gas from the surrounding disk.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Direct Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Multi-Scale Gas Inflows in Galaxy Mergers will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-305413