Direct collapse black hole formation via high-velocity collisions of protogalaxies

Abstract

We propose high-velocity collisions of protogalaxies as a new pathway to form supermassive stars (SMSs) with masses of ~ 10^5 Msun at high redshift (z > 10). When protogalaxies hosted by dark matter halos with a virial temperature of ~ 10^4 K collide with a relative velocity > 200 km/s, the gas is shock-heated to ~ 10^6 K and subsequently cools isobarically via free-free emission and He^+, He, and H line emission. Since the gas density (> 10^4 cm^{-3}) is high enough to destroy H_2 molecules by collisional dissociation, the shocked gas never cools below ~ 10^4 K. Once a gas cloud of ~ 10^5 Msun reaches this temperature, it becomes gravitationally unstable and forms a SMS which will rapidly collapse into a super massive black hole (SMBH) via general relativistic instability. We perform a simple analytic estimate of the number density of direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) formed through this scenario (calibrated with cosmological N-body simulations) and find n_{DCBH} ~ 10^{-9} Mpc^{-3} (comoving) by z = 10. This could potentially explain the abundance of bright high-z quasars.

9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• Formation of supermassive black hole seeds
• The Evolution of Supermassive Population III Stars
• On the Maximum Mass of Accreting Primordial Supermassive Stars
• Supersonic Gas Streams Enhance the Formation of Massive Black Holes in the Early Universe
• Super-Eddington Accretion and Feedback from the First Massive Seed Black Holes
• The formation of direct collapse black holes under the influence of streaming velocities
• Cosmological Simulations of Early Blackhole Formation: Halo Mergers, Tidal Disruption, and the Conditions for Direct Collapse
• On the formation of the first quasars
• Limits on Population III star formation in minihaloes implied by Planck
• Forming massive seed black holes in high-redshift quasar host progenitors
• The Early Growth of the First Black Holes
• Radiation Hydrodynamical Simulations of the First Quasars
• Chasing the observational signatures of seed black holes at z > 7: candidate statistics
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• Chasing the observational signatures of seed black holes at z > 7: candidate observability
• Multi-flavour SMBH seeding and evolution in cosmological environments
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• Assembly of supermassive black hole seeds
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• Globular Cluster Formation from Colliding Substructure
• Super-Eddington growth of black holes in the early Universe: effects of disk radiation spectra
• Identifying Direct Collapse Black Hole Seeds through their Small Host Galaxies
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• Constraints from dwarf galaxies on black hole seeding and growth models with current and future surveys
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• Triggering the formation of direct collapse black holes by their congeners
• Probing supermassive black hole seed scenarios with gravitational wave measurements
• Magnetic Effects Promote Supermassive Star Formation in Metal-enriched Atomic-cooling Halos
• Biconical-dominated Accretion Flow onto Seed Black Holes in a Hyper-accretion Regime
• Halo Mergers Enhance the Growth of Massive Black Hole Seeds
• Direct Collapse Black Hole Candidates from Decaying Dark Matter
• Identification of Candidate Halos Hosting Massive Black Hole Seeds in the $\text{Renaissance}$ Simulations with Support Vector Machines