X-ray emission from high-redshift miniquasars: self-regulating the population of massive black holes through global warming

TL;DR

This paper proposes that X-ray emissions from early miniquasars created a feedback mechanism that globally warmed the intergalactic medium, regulating the formation of supermassive black holes and aligning with observed high-redshift SMBH populations.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model where early X-ray feedback from miniquasars suppresses subsequent black hole growth, explaining the observed SMBH mass density at high redshift.

Findings

X-ray feedback can regulate SMBH growth in the early universe.

Models match observed SMBH mass functions at z=6.

Predicted gravitational wave event rates for z>6 mergers.

Abstract

Observations of high-redshift quasars at z>6 imply that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses over a billion solar masses were in place less than 1 Gyr after the Big Bang. If these SMBHs assembled from "seed" BHs left behind by the first stars, then they must have accreted gas at close to the Eddington limit during a large fraction (>50%) of the time. A generic problem with this scenario, however, is that the mass density in million-solar-mass SMBHs at z=6 already exceeds the locally observed SMBH mass density by several orders of magnitude; in order to avoid this overproduction, BH seed formation and growth must become significantly less efficient in less massive protogalaxies, while proceeding uninterrupted in the most massive galaxies that formed first. Using Monte-Carlo realizations of the merger and growth history of BHs, we show that X-rays from the earliest accreting BHs can provide such a feedback mechanism. Our calculations paint a self-consistent picture of black-hole-made climate change, in which the first miniquasars---among them the ancestors of the z>6 quasar SMBHs---globally warm the IGM and suppress the formation and growth of subsequent generations of BHs. We present two specific models with global miniquasar feedback that provide excellent agreement with recent estimates of the z=6 SMBH mass function. For each of these models, we estimate the rate of BH mergers at z>6 that could be detected by the proposed gravitational-wave observatory eLISA/NGO.