Intermediate-mass black holes and contribution to extragalactic background light from Population III stars in Milky Way-like galaxies

Abstract

The mass range of observed black holes extends from stellar-mass to supermassive scales, yet the existence of objects in the intermediate-mass range of $10^2-10^5{\text{M}}_{\odot }$ remains unconfirmed. Black holes are suspected to compress the surrounding dark matter distribution, forming a ``spike''. If dark matter is self-annihilating, the spike could produce gamma-ray emission sufficiently luminous to be detected. This work aims to estimate the number of expected unmerged intermediate-mass black holes in a Milky Way-like galaxy that could form such spikes. These intermediate-mass black holes are assumed to have formed from the collapse of high-mass Population III stars, such that the resulting merger rate is constrained by observations of gravitational wave emission. It is furthermore estimated to what extent the progenitor Population III stars contribute to the extragalactic background light. The Population III stars are simulated and tracked using the A-SLOTH semi-analytical simulation code and the resulting number of intermediate-mass black holes is constrained by applying the Population III binary black hole merger rate to an effective volume determined from the Population III star formation rate. In this framework, $\sim 130$ unmerged IMBHs from Population III stars are expected to reside in a Milky Way-like galaxy. The contribution of their progenitors to the extragalactic background light in the near-infrared is less than $10^{-3}\text{nW}{\text{m}}^{-2}{\text{sr}}^{-1}$, well below previous estimates.

8 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (20)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• Gemini and Hubble Space Telescope Evidence for an Intermediate Mass Black Hole in omega Centauri
• JWST's PEARLS: Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science: Project Overview and First Results
• Solving puzzles of GW150914 by primordial black holes
• Detection of the Keplerian decline in the Milky Way rotation curve
• Fast-moving stars around an intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri
• Cradles of the first stars: self-shielding, halo masses, and multiplicity
• Merger rate density of binary black holes through isolated Population I, II, III and extremely metal-poor binary star evolution
• Public Release of A-SLOTH: Ancient Stars and Local Observables by Tracing Halos
• Modeling the Extragalactic Background Light and the Cosmic Star Formation History
• Indirect Evidence for Dark Matter Density Spikes around Stellar-Mass Black Holes
• Search for Gamma-rays from Dark Matter annihilations around Intermediate Mass Black Holes with the H.E.S.S. experiment
• A-SLOTH reveals the nature of the first stars
• Ultraluminous X-ray sources are beamed
• A Metal-Free Galaxy at $z=3.19$? Evidence of Late Population III Star Formation at Cosmic Noon
• Constraining the cosmic merger history of intermediate-mass black holes with gravitational wave detectors
• Gamma rays from dark matter spikes in EAGLE simulations