The critical radiation intensity for direct collapse black hole formation: dependence on the radiation spectral shape

TL;DR

This study investigates how the critical radiation intensity needed for direct collapse black hole formation varies with spectral shape, finding that realistic spectra require higher intensities than previously estimated, impacting black hole formation models.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the dependence of the critical radiation intensity on spectral shape and metallicity, refining previous estimates for DCBH formation conditions.

Findings

J^crit is insensitive to age or metallicity in constant star formation galaxies.

J^crit decreases with galaxy age or metallicity in instantaneous starburst galaxies.

Higher J^crit values for realistic spectra suggest lower DCBH number densities than previously thought.

Abstract

It has been proposed that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are originated from direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) that are formed at z gtrsim 10 in the primordial gas in the case that H2 cooling is suppressed by strong external radiation. In this work, we study the critical specific intensity J^crit required for DCBH formation for various radiation spectral shapes by a series of one-zone calculations of a collapsing primordial- gas cloud. We calculate the critical specific intensity at the Lyman-Werner (LW) bands J^crit_LW,21 (in units of 10^-21 erg s^-1 Hz^-1 sr^-1 cm^-2) for realistic spectra of metal-poor galaxies. We find J^crit is not sensitive to the age or metallicity for the constant star formation galaxies with J^crit_LW,21 = 1300-1400, while J^crit decreases as galaxies become older or more metal-enriched for the instantaneous starburst galaxies. However, such dependence for the instantaneous starburst galaxies is weak for the young or extremely metal-poor galaxies: J^crit_LW,21 = 1000-1400 for the young galaxies and J^crit_LW,21 approx 1400 for the extremely metal-poor galaxies. The typical value of J^crit for the realistic spectra is higher than those expected in the literature, which affects the estimated DCBH number density n_DCBH. By extrapolating the result of Dijkstra, Ferrara and Mesinger, we obtain n_DCBH sim 10^-10 cMpc^-3 at z = 10, although there is still large uncertainty in this estimation.