Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies

Details Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21511501v&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #115.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.594

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We can easily trace the presence of massive black holes, weighing millions to billions of solar masses, at early cosmic times, as the engines powering the luminous quasars. Dynamical evidence also indicates that massive black holes ordinarily dwell in the centers of most nearby galaxies. These quiescent massive black holes are the dead remnants of past nuclear activity. The advances in observational cosmology and extragalactic astronomy have shed light on the evolution of the massive black hole population, as traced by quasar activity, up to z ˜ 4. We do know that massive black holes are there, but we do not know how they got there. The early evolution of massive black holes, and most notably, what physical mechanism is responsible for their formation are still unknown.
In this talk I will address basic, but critical, questions on the cosmological significance of massive black holes. What physical mechanisms lead to the formation of the first massive black holes? How massive were the initial massive black hole seeds? When and where did they form?
I will mostly focus on astrophysical processes that happen in the first galaxies, and I will consider three possibilities: that massive black holes are the remnants of the first generation of stars, that massive black hole formation is triggered by gas-dynamical instabilities, that massive black hole seeds are formed via stellar-dynamical processes. I will also discuss possible observational tests that can be performed with current and future instruments to discriminate among different scenarios

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