Rapid growth of seed black holes in the early universe by supra-exponential accretion

Abstract

Mass accretion by black holes (BHs) is typically capped at the Eddington rate, when radiation's push balances gravity's pull. However, even exponential growth at the Eddington-limited e-folding time t_E ~ few x 0.01 billion years, is too slow to grow stellar-mass BH seeds into the supermassive luminous quasars that are observed when the universe is 1 billion years old. We propose a dynamical mechanism that can trigger supra-exponential accretion in the early universe, when a BH seed is trapped in a star cluster fed by the ubiquitous dense cold gas flows. The high gas opacity traps the accretion radiation, while the low-mass BH's random motions suppress the formation of a slowly-draining accretion disk. Supra-exponential growth can thus explain the puzzling emergence of supermassive BHs that power luminous quasars so soon after the Big Bang.

Some typos corrected and minor stylistic changes to conform with final printed version. 18 pages (main article and supplementary materials) and 3 figures. First appeared in Science Express: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/06/science.1251053. Final printed version: T. Alexander, P. Natarajan, Science, 12 September 2014, Vol. 345 no. 6202 pp. 1330-1333

References in corpus (10)

• Cold streams in early massive hot haloes as the main mode of galaxy formation
• A luminous quasar at a redshift of z = 7.085
• Formation of Supermassive Black Holes by Direct Collapse in Pregalactic Halos
• Supermassive black hole formation during the assembly of pre-galactic discs
• Formation of the first nuclear clusters and massive black holes at high redshift
• Accretion onto the First Stellar Mass Black Holes
• Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. II. Central Gravitational Collapse
• Warp diffusion in accretion discs: a numerical investigation
• The Co-Formation of Spheroids and Quasars Traced in their Clustering
• Resonant relaxation near a massive black hole: the dependence on eccentricity

Cited by in corpus (74)

• Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes
• Physical properties of 15 quasars at $z\gtrsim 6.5$
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes
• The origins of massive black holes
• Concerns regarding the use of black hole shadows as standard rulers
• Very high redshift quasars and the rapid emergence of super-massive black holes
• The powerful jet of an off-nuclear intermediate-mass black hole in the spiral galaxy NGC 2276
• Turbulent Cold Flows Gave Birth to the First Quasars
• Constraints on Stupendously Large Black Holes
• A new channel to form IMBHs throughout cosmic time
• Origins and Demographics of Wandering Black Holes
• Observational Signatures of High-Redshift Quasars and Local Relics of Black Hole Seeds
• Seeding Supermassive Black Holes with Self-Interacting Dark Matter: A Unified Scenario with Baryons
• Conditions for Optimal Growth of Black Hole Seeds
• Seeds Don't Sink: Even Massive Black Hole "Seeds" Cannot Migrate to Galaxy Centers Efficiently
• On the Accretion Rates and Radiative Efficiencies of the Highest Redshift Quasars
• Forming massive seed black holes in high-redshift quasar host progenitors
• Exploring SMBH Assembly with Semi-analytic Modelling
• UNCOVER: 404 Error -- Models Not Found for the Triply Imaged Little Red Dot A2744-QSO1
• Rapid growth of seed black holes during early bulge formation
• The sustainable growth of the first black holes
• Unveiling early black hole growth with multi-frequency gravitational wave observations
• Formation of supermassive black hole seeds in nuclear star clusters via gas accretion and runaway collisions
• The Search for the Farthest Quasar: Consequences for Black Hole Growth and Seed Models
• Unveiling the Population of Wandering Black Holes via Electromagnetic Signatures
• Faint progenitors of luminous $z\sim 6$ quasars: why don't we see them?
• Origin of supermassive black holes in massive metal-poor protoclusters
• A new bright z=6.82 quasar discovered with VISTA: VHS J0411-0907
• Lyman-Werner Escape Fractions from the First Galaxies
• Overmassive black holes at cosmic noon: linking the local and the high-redshift Universe
• Effects of stellar-mass primordial black holes on first star formation
• X-ray properties of z>6.5 quasars
• Growing Black Holes through Successive Mergers in Galactic Nuclei: I. Methods and First Results
• The Active Fraction of Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Exploring a primordial solution for early black holes detected with the JWST
• UNCOVERing the contribution of black holes to reionization in the JWST era
• Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Intermediate-mass black hole demographics from optical synoptic surveys
• Little Red Dots As Late-stage Quasi-stars
• How long do high-redshift massive black hole seeds remain outliers in black hole vs. host galaxy relations?
• Driving the Growth of the Earliest Supermassive Black Holes with Major Mergers of Host Galaxies
• Feedback Limits to Maximum Seed Masses of Black Holes
• Effect of mass loss due to stellar winds on the formation of supermassive black hole seeds in dense nuclear star clusters
• High-redshift SMBHs can grow from stellar-mass seeds via chaotic accretion
• Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei II: retention and growth of seed intermediate-mass black holes
• Dynamics of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Wandering in the Milky Way Galaxy Using the Illustris TNG50 Simulation
• Detectability of Wandering Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the Milky Way Galaxy from Radio to X-rays
• Growth of Massive Black-Holes in FFB Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn
• The central engine of the highest redshift blazar
• Cosmological 21cm line observations to test scenarios of super-Eddington accretion on to black holes being seeds of high-redshifted supermassive black holes
• On the effect of Lyman alpha trapping during the initial collapse of massive black hole seeds
• Potential Black Hole Seeding of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 4424 via an Infalling Star Cluster
• The role of gravitational recoil in the assembly of massive black hole seeds
• Do Stellar Winds Prevent the Formation of Supermassive Stars by Accretion?
• The properties of primordially-seeded black holes and their hosts in the first billion years: implications for JWST
• An Enhanced Massive Black Hole Occupation Fraction Predicted in Cluster Dwarf Galaxies
• Observational Signatures of Massive Black Hole Progenitor Pathways: Could Leo I a Smoking Gun?
• Refining the mass estimate for the intermediate-mass black hole candidate in NGC 3319
• A Measurement of the Cosmic Expansion Within our Lifetime
• Submillimeter signatures from growing supermassive black holes before reionization
• Primordial Black-Hole-Based Pathways to Little Red Dots
• Biconical-dominated Accretion Flow onto Seed Black Holes in a Hyper-accretion Regime
• Imprints of the super-Eddington accretion on the quasar clustering
• Astrophysics with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Accelerated growth of seed black holes by dust in the early universe
• Growth of Light Seed Black Holes in the Early Universe
• Halo Mergers Enhance the Growth of Massive Black Hole Seeds
• An estimate of the gravitational-wave background from the observed cosmological distribution of quasars
• Central Engine and Spectral Energy Distribution Properties of High Redshift Gamma Ray Blazars
• Super-Eddington Growth Ceiling: Analytic Constraints on the Rapid Growth of Light-Seed Black Holes in Massive Clumps
• Variability as a new discovery channel for Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the Time Domain Era
• Investigating the residuals in the $M_{\bullet }-M_{\ast }$ relation using the SIMBA cosmological simulation
• Off-center black hole seed formation? Implications for high and low redshift massive black holes
• A Simple Condition for Sustained Super-Eddington Black Hole Growth