Massive black hole and Population III galaxy formation in over-massive dark matter halos with violent merger histories

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new formation pathway for massive black holes and Population III galaxies in over-massive dark matter halos caused by frequent mergers and high baryonic streaming velocities, leading to potential early universe quasars.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scenario where frequent mergers and streaming velocities delay star formation, enabling direct collapse black holes and Population III galaxies to form in massive halos at high redshift.

Findings

Estimated number density of such halos: ~10^{-4} cMpc^{-3}.

Formation of ~10^5 M_sun black holes and ~10^6 M_sun Population III galaxies.

Potential detectability with JWST at z > 15.

Abstract

We propose the formation of massive pristine dark-matter (DM) halos with masses of $\sim 10^8~M_\odot$, due to the dynamical effects of frequent mergers in rare regions of the Universe with high baryonic streaming velocity relative to DM. Since the streaming motion prevents gas collapse into DM halos and delays prior star formation episodes, the gas remains metal-free until the halo virial temperatures $\gtrsim 2\times 10^4~{\rm K}$. The minimum cooling mass of DM halos is boosted by a factor of $\sim 10-30$ because frequent major mergers of halos further inhibit gas collapse. We use Monte Carlo merger trees to simulate the DM assembly history under a streaming velocity of twice the root-mean-square value, and estimate the number density of massive DM halos containing pristine gas as $\simeq 10^{-4}~{\rm cMpc}^{-3}$. When the gas infall begins, efficient Ly$\alpha$ cooling drives cold streams penetrating inside the halo and feeding a central galactic disk. When one stream collides with the disk, strong shock forms a dense and hot gas cloud, where the gas never forms H$_2$ molecules due to effective collisional dissociation. As a result, a massive gas cloud forms by gravitational instability and collapses directly into a massive black hole (BH) with $M_\bullet \sim 10^5~M_\odot$. Almost simultaneously, a galaxy with $M_{\star, \rm tot}\sim 10^6~M_\odot$ composed of Population III stars forms in the nuclear region. If the typical stellar mass is as high as $\sim 100~M_\odot$, the galaxy could be detected with the James Webb Space Telescope even at $z\gtrsim 15$. These massive seed BHs would be fed by continuous gas accretion from the host galaxy, and grow to be bright quasars observed at $z\gtrsim 6$.