Seeding Black Holes in Cosmological Simulations

Abstract

We present a new model for the formation of black holes in cosmological simulations, motivated by the first star formation. Black holes form from high density peaks of primordial gas, and grow via both gas accretion and mergers. Massive black holes heat the surrounding material, suppressing star formation at the centres of galaxies, and driving galactic winds. We perform an investigation into the physical effects of the model parameters, and obtain a `best' set of these parameters by comparing the outcome of simulations to observations. With this best set, we successfully reproduce the cosmic star formation rate history, black hole mass -- velocity dispersion relation, and the size -- velocity dispersion relation of galaxies. The black hole seed mass is 10^3Msun, which is orders of magnitude smaller than has been used in previous cosmological simulations with active galactic nuclei, but suggests that the origin of the seed black holes is the death of Population III stars.

20 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• The Metallicity and Elemental Abundance Gradients of Simulated Galaxies, and their Environmental Dependence
• The first Super Massive Black Holes: indications from models for future observations
• Time Evolution of Galaxy Scaling Relations in Cosmological Simulations
• $R_{\mathrm{e}}$. I. Understanding galaxy sizes, associated luminosity densities, and the artificial division of the early-type galaxy population
• Machine learning detects multiplicity of the first stars in stellar archaeology data
• SIMBA-C: An updated chemical enrichment model for galactic chemical evolution in the SIMBA simulation
• The diversity of the circumgalactic medium around z = 0 Milky Way-mass galaxies from the Auriga simulations
• The impact of black hole seeding in cosmological simulations
• Star Formation in Simulated Galaxies: Understanding the Transition to Quiescence at $3\times 10^{10}$ M${}_{\odot }$
• Oxygen Loss from Simulated Galaxies and the Metal Flow Main Sequence: Predicting the Dependence on Mass and Environment
• The metallicity and elemental abundance maps of kinematically atypical galaxies for constraining minor merger and accretion histories