Massive black holes lurking in Milky Way satellites

TL;DR

This study models the evolution of massive black holes in Milky Way satellite dwarf galaxies to understand their origins, revealing that seed formation mechanisms influence black hole properties and detectability.

Contribution

It compares two black hole seed formation models in dwarf galaxies and predicts their present-day properties and occupation fractions within the Milky Way environment.

Findings

Massive seed black holes have larger masses but lower occupation fractions.

Population III remnants have higher occupation fractions but smaller masses.

Most black holes retain their original seed mass, aiding origin identification.

Abstract

As massive black holes (MBHs) grow from lower-mass seeds, it is natural to expect that a leftover population of progenitor MBHs should also exist in the present universe. Dwarf galaxies undergo a quiet merger history, and as a result, we expect that dwarfs observed in the local Universe retain some `memory' of the original seed mass distribution. Consequently, the properties of MBHs in nearby dwarf galaxies may provide clean indicators of the efficiency of MBH formation. In order to examine the properties of MBHs in dwarf galaxies, we evolve different MBH populations within a Milky Way halo from high-redshift to today. We consider two plausible MBH formation mechanisms: `massive seeds' formed via gas-dynamical instabilities and a Population III remnant seed model. `Massive seeds' have larger masses than PopIII remnants, but form in rarer hosts. We dynamically evolve all halos merging with the central system, taking into consideration how the interaction modifies the satellites, stripping their outer mass layers. We compute different properties of the MBH population hosted in these satellites. We find that for the most part MBHs retain the original mass, thus providing a clear indication of what the properties of the seeds were. We derive the black hole occupation fraction (BHOF) of the satellite population at z=0. MBHs generated as `massive seeds' have large masses that would favour their identification, but their typical BHOF is always below 40 per cent and decreases to less than per cent for observed dwarf galaxy sizes. In contrast, Population III remnants have a higher BHOF, but their masses have not grown much since formation, inhibiting their detection.