Supermassive Black Holes from Ultra-Strongly Self-Interacting Dark Matter

Abstract

We consider the cosmological consequences if a small fraction ($f\lesssim 0.1$) of the dark matter is ultra-strongly self-interacting, with an elastic self-interaction cross-section per unit mass $\sigma \gg 1\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2/g$. This possibility evades all current constraints that assume that the self-interacting component makes up the majority of the dark matter. Nevertheless, even a small fraction of ultra-strongly self-interacting dark matter (uSIDM) can have observable consequences on astrophysical scales. In particular, the uSIDM subcomponent can undergo gravothermal collapse and form seed black holes in the center of a halo. These seed black holes, which form within several hundred halo interaction times, contain a few percent of the total uSIDM mass in the halo. For reasonable values of $\sigma f$, these black holes can form at high enough redshifts to grow to $\sim 10^9{M}_{\odot }$ quasars by $z\gtrsim 6$, alleviating tension within the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. The ubiquitous formation of central black holes in halos could also create cores in dwarf galaxies by ejecting matter during binary black hole mergers, potentially resolving the "too big to fail" problem.

submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (17)

• A luminous quasar at a redshift of z = 7.085
• Too big to fail? The puzzling darkness of massive Milky Way subhaloes
• Constraints on the Self-Interaction Cross-Section of Dark Matter from Numerical Simulations of the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-5
• A Global Three Dimensional Radiation Magneto-hydrodynamic Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion Disks
• The Formation of Population III Binaries from Cosmological Initial Conditions
• Formation of z ~ 6 quasars from hierarchical galaxy mergers
• Super-Critical Growth of Massive Black Holes from Stellar-Mass Seeds
• Too Big to Fail in the Local Group
• Is there a "too big to fail" problem in the field?
• Early Cosmological HII/HeIII Regions and Their Impact on Second-Generation Star Formation
• The aftermath of the first stars: massive black holes
• A Dark Core in Abell 520
• The HII Region of a Primordial Star
• The first generation of stars in LCDM cosmology
• Dark Matter as a Trigger for Periodic Comet Impacts
• The Most Massive Active Black-Holes at z~1.5-3.5 Have High Spins and Radiative Efficiencies
• Origin of supermassive black holes

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Hidden Sector Hydrogen as Dark Matter: Small-scale Structure Formation Predictions and the Importance of Hyperfine Interactions
• Signatures of Earth-scattering in the direct detection of Dark Matter
• Dark matter concentrations in galactic nuclei according to polytropic models