Sunyaev-Zel'dovich constraints from black hole-seeded proto-galaxies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how proto-galaxies with super-massive black holes impact the cosmic microwave background through Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, providing constraints on black hole seeding and their cosmic influence.

Contribution

It offers new predictions of SZ distortions from black hole-seeded proto-galaxies and derives constraints based on COBE-FIRAS data, linking black hole growth to CMB anisotropies.

Findings

Constraints on the fraction of black hole-seeded proto-galaxies.

Limits on the black hole-to-spheroid mass ratio.

Estimated contribution to small-scale CMB anisotropies.

Abstract

Recent studies of galactic nuclei suggest that most galaxies are seeded by super-massive black holes which power the central nucleus. In this picture, the proto-galactic object is likely to have undergone a very active phase during which the surrounding medium was shocked and heated up to very high temperatures. We predict the cosmological effects of this scenario in terms of the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich distortions induced on galactic scales by a population of proto-galaxies. These predictions are compared to the observational limit on the mean Compton distortion set by the COBE-FIRAS instrument. This enables us to derive tight constraints on the fraction of proto-galaxies seeded by super-massive black holes as well as on the black hole-to-spheroid mass ratio. Finally, we estimate the contribution of such a population to the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropies on very small angular scales ($l\simeq 10^4-10^5$).