Growth of High-Redshift Quasars from Fermion Dark Matter Seeds

TL;DR

This paper proposes a model for early black hole growth from fermion dark matter seeds, explaining high-redshift quasar observations without super-Eddington accretion, and suggests these seeds originate from fermion core collapses.

Contribution

It introduces a cosmology-based framework modeling black hole growth from fermion dark matter seeds, fitting observed high-redshift quasars without super-Eddington episodes.

Findings

Massive seed black holes (~10^6 M_sun) formed at z~20-30 in overdense environments.

Growth histories include a prolonged supply-limited stage, matching observed quasar masses.

Seed masses are consistent with fermion dark matter core collapse scenarios.

Abstract

Quasars hosting $\gtrsim 10^{9}\,M_\odot$ black holes at $z>6$ challenge growth scenarios that start from light seeds and assume accretion within already formed galaxies. Motivated by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovery of Little Red Dots (LRDs), which suggests that $\sim 10^{6}\,M_\odot$ black holes can be active in compact, pre-galactic environments, we revisit early black hole growth with a minimal cosmology-based framework. We model the accretion history as the smaller of the Bondi inflow rate and the Eddington-limited rate, where the Bondi rate is set by the supply of overdense primordial gas whose density declines with cosmic expansion, and the Eddington rate captures regulation by radiative feedback. By fitting the observed masses and luminosities of J0313--1806 ($z=7.64$) and J0100+2802 ($z=6.30$) with Bayesian inference, we infer initial conditions that favor massive seed black holes with initial mass $M_0 \sim 10^{6}\,M_\odot$, formed at $z\sim20{-}30$ in environments with baryonic overdensity factors $f_\rho \gtrsim 50$ relative to the cosmic mean. The resulting growth histories include a prolonged supply-limited stage, and they reproduce the observed quasar masses without requiring sustained Eddington accretion or any super-Eddington episodes. The inferred seed mass scale is consistent with black holes produced by the collapse of quantum-degenerate fermion dark matter cores, providing a physically defined pathway to massive seeds at the redshifts implied by LRD phenomenology.