Bibcode
Paardekooper, Jan-Pieter; Khochfar, Sadegh; Johnson, Jarrett L.; Agarwal, B.; Dalla Vecchia, C.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 443, Issue 1, p.648-657
Advertised on:
9
2014
Citations
98
Refereed citations
93
Description
We investigate the environment in which direct-collapse black holes may
form by analysing a cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation that is part
of the First Billion Years project. This simulation includes the most
relevant physical processes leading to direct collapse of haloes, most
importantly, molecular hydrogen depletion by dissociation of
H2 and H- from the evolving Lyman-Werner radiation
field. We selected a sample of pristine atomic-cooling haloes that have
never formed stars in their past, have not been polluted with heavy
elements and are cooling predominantly via atomic hydrogen lines.
Amongst them we identified six haloes that could potentially harbour
massive seed black holes formed via direct collapse (with masses in the
range of 104-6 M⊙). These potential hosts of
direct-collapse black holes form as satellites are found within 15
physical kpc of protogalaxies, with stellar masses in the range
≈105-7 M⊙ and maximal star formation rates
of ≈0.1 M⊙ yr-1 over the past 5 Myr, and
are exposed to the highest flux of Lyman-Werner radiation emitted from
the neighbouring galaxies. It is the proximity to these protogalaxies
that differentiates these haloes from rest of the sample.
Related projects
Galaxy Evolution in Clusters of Galaxies
Galaxies in the universe can be located in different environments, some of them are isolated or in low density regions and they are usually called field galaxies. The others can be located in galaxy associations, going from loose groups to clusters or even superclusters of galaxies. One of the foremost challenges of the modern Astrophysics is to
Jairo
Méndez Abreu