SLAC Publication SLAC-PUB-13750
SLAC Release Date: August 5, 2009
Accretion onto the First Stellar Mass Black Holes
Alvarez, Marcelo A., Wise, John H., Abel, Tom
The first stars, forming at redshifts z > 15 in minihalos with M » 105-6M¯ may leave behind remnant black holes, which could conceivably have been the "seeds" for the supermassive black holes observed at z ~ 7. We study remnant black hole growth through accretion, including for the first time the radiation emitted due to accretion, with adaptive mesh refinement cosmological radiation-hydrodynamical simulations. The effects of photo-ionization and heating dramatically affect the large-scale inf...
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The first stars, forming at redshifts z > 15 in minihalos with M » 105-6M¯ may leave behind remnant black holes, which could conceivably have been the "seeds" for the supermassive black holes observed at z ~ 7. We study remnant black hole growth through accretion, including for the first time the radiation emitted due to accretion, with adaptive mesh refinement cosmological radiation-hydrodynamical simulations. The effects of photo-ionization and heating dramatically affect the large-scale inflow, resulting in negligible mass growth. We compare cases with accretion luminosity included and neglected to show that accretion radiation drastically changes the environment within 100 pc of the black hole, increasing gas temperatures by an order of magnitude. Gas densities are reduced and further star formation in the same minihalo is prevented for the two hundred million years we followed. Without radiative feedback included most seed black holes do not gain mass as efficiently as has been hoped for in previous theories, implying that black hole remnants of Pop III stars in minihalos are not likely to be miniquasars. Most importantly, however, our calculations demonstrate that if these black holes are indeed accreting close to the Bondi-Hoyle rate with ten percent radiative efficiency they have a dramatic local effect in regulating star formation in the first galaxies. This suggests a novel mechanism for massive black hole formation – stellar-mass black holes may have suppressed fragmentation and star formation after falling into halos with virial temperatures » 104 K, facilitating intermediate mass black hole formation at their centers.
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Published in 2009 in Astrophys.J., vol. 701, pp. L133-L137
Interest Categories: Astrophysics
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