Black Holes in the Early Universe

Abstract

The existence of massive black holes was postulated in the sixties, when the first quasars were discovered. In the late nineties their reality was proven beyond doubt, in the Milky way and a handful nearby galaxies. Since then, enormous theoretical and observational efforts have been made to understand the astrophysics of massive black holes. We have discovered that some of the most massive black holes known, weighing billions of solar masses, powered luminous quasars within the first billion years of the Universe. The first massive black holes must therefore have formed around the time the first stars and galaxies formed. Dynamical evidence also indicates that black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses ordinarily dwell in the centers of today's galaxies. Massive black holes populate galaxy centers today, and shone as quasars in the past; the quiescent black holes that we detect now in nearby bulges are the dormant remnants of this fiery past. In this review we report on basic, but critical, questions regarding 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? How is the growth of black holes linked to that of their host galaxy? Answers to most of these questions are work in progress, in the spirit of these Reports on Progress in Physics.

Reports on Progress in Physics, in press

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Cited by in corpus (71)

• The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes
• Formation of the First Stars
• The Romulus Cosmological Simulations: A Physical Approach to the Formation, Dynamics and Accretion Models of SMBHs
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes
• Hyper-Eddington accretion flows onto massive black holes
• The Observational Signatures of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds
• Initial mass function of intermediate mass black hole seeds
• Improved Dynamical Constraints on the Masses of the Central Black Holes in Nearby Low-mass Early-type Galactic Nuclei And the First Black Hole Determination for NGC 205
• X-ray constraints on the local supermassive black hole occupation fraction
• Massive black hole factories: Supermassive and quasi-star formation in primordial halos
• From the first stars to the first black holes
• How to quench a galaxy
• Formation of massive protostars in atomic cooling haloes
• Constraining the primordial initial mass function with stellar archaeology
• Radiative Feedback from high mass X-ray binaries on the formation of the first galaxies and early reionization
• Dancing to ChaNGa: A Self-Consistent Prediction For Close SMBH Pair Formation Timescales Following Galaxy Mergers
• The Faint End of the z=5 Quasar Luminosity Function from the CFHTLS
• The route to massive black hole formation via merger-driven direct collapse: a review
• High-redshift quasars host galaxies: is there a stellar mass crisis?
• A UV flux constraint on the formation of direct collapse black holes
• Shining in the Dark: the Spectral Evolution of the First Black Holes
• Formation and Coalescence of Cosmological Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Supermassive Star Collapse
• The small scale dynamo and the amplification of magnetic fields in massive primordial haloes
• Distinguishing black holes and wormholes with orbiting hot spots
• Massive black hole seeds born via direct gas collapse in galaxy mergers: their properties, statistics and environment
• Accretion onto Black Holes from Large Scales Regulated by Radiative Feedback. III. Enhanced Luminosity of Intermediate Mass Black Holes Moving at Supersonic Speeds
• Music from the heavens - Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole mergers in the EAGLE simulations
• The merger fraction of active and inactive galaxies in the local Universe through an improved non-parametric classification
• Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe
• Host galaxies of high-redshift quasars: supermassive black hole growth and feedback
• Large-Scale Structure Formation: from the first non-linear objects to massive galaxy clusters
• Impact of dust cooling on direct collapse black hole formation
• Assessing inflow rates in atomic cooling halos: implications for direct collapse black holes
• Simulating the growth of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• The formation of massive primordial stars in the presence of moderate UV backgrounds
• A Catalog of Hyper-luminous X-ray Sources and Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Candidates out to High Redshifts
• Search for gravitational radiation from intermediate mass black hole binaries in data from the second LIGO-Virgo joint science run
• Black Hole Starvation and Bulge Evolution in a Milky Way-like Galaxy
• Multi-flavour SMBH seeding and evolution in cosmological environments
• Faint progenitors of luminous $z\sim 6$ quasars: why don't we see them?
• Stars and Black Holes from the very Early Universe
• On the Physical Requirements for a Pre-Reionization Origin of the Unresolved Near-Infrared Background
• Not So Heavy Metals: Black Hole Feedback Enriches The Circumgalactic Medium
• Identifying Direct Collapse Black Hole Seeds through their Small Host Galaxies
• Ultra-luminous quasars at redshift $z>4.5$ from SkyMapper
• Mergers of accreting stellar-mass black holes
• Propulsion of Spacecrafts to Relativistic Speeds Using Natural Astrophysical Sources
• The MBHBM${}^{\star }$ Project -- II. Molecular Gas Kinematics in the Lenticular Galaxy NGC 3593 Reveal a Supermassive Black Hole
• Black hole formation in the context of dissipative dark matter
• Discrete diffusion Lyman-alpha radiative transfer
• Seeding supermassive black holes with a non-vortical dark-matter subcomponent
• Dynamical friction and evolution of black holes in cosmological simulations: a new implementation in OpenGadget3
• Role of primordial black holes in the direct collapse scenario of supermassive black hole formation at high redshifts
• Quasinormal Modes and Topological Characteristics of a Schwarzschild Black Hole Surrounded by the Dehnen Type Dark Matter Halo
• Merger Histories and Environments of Dwarf AGN in IllustrisTNG
• Primordial Black Hole Merger Rate in $f(R)$ Gravity
• The Clustering of Undetected High-redshift Black Holes and Their Signatures in Cosmic Backgrounds
• Opacity limit for supermassive protostars
• Observational challenges in Ly-alpha intensity mapping
• Strongly Coupled Dark Energy Cosmologies yielding large mass Primordial Black Holes
• Exponentially growing bubbles around early super massive black holes
• Gravitational Waves from Direct Collapse Black Holes Formation
• Is GN-z11 powered by a super-Eddington massive black hole?
• Prospects for intermediate mass black hole binary searches with advanced gravitational-wave detectors
• The chemical evolution of self-gravitating primordial disks
• Probing $z\gtrsim 6$ massive black holes with gravitational waves
• Growth problems of stellar black holes in early galaxies
• Bright siren without electromagnetic counterpart by LISA-Taiji-TianQin network
• Mocking Faint Black Holes during Reionization
• The role of gas fragmentation during the formation of supermassive black holes
• The Contribution of AGN Accretion Disks to Hydrogen Reionization