BLACK HOLE SEEDING in the L-GALAXY

SEMI-ANALYTIC MODEL
Daniele Spinoso, Silvia Bonoli, David Izquierdo-Villalba
Centro de Estudios de Fı́sica del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Teruel, Spain
48th Saas-Fee course: Black hole formation and growth - 28 January 2018 to 3 February 2018
INTRODUCTION
The observation of extremely luminous QSO sources at high redshift (z > 6, e.g. Mortlock et al. 2011, Decarli et al. 2018), which are tought to be powered by gas accretion
onto super-massive black holes (SMBHs), gives strict constraints on the growth time-scales of billion-solar-masses black holes in the very young universe ( tAGE ≪ 1Gyr).
At the same time, the actual processes leading to the formation and growth of these objects (i.e. “seeding problem”) are still highly debated. Theoretical and numerical
approaches have repeatedly addressed this issue without reaching conclusive results yet (e.g. Volonteri & Bellovary 2012, Johnson & Haardt 2016)
Within this scenario, semi-analytic models based on the largest-to-date dark-matter-only N-Body simulations are a great tool in order to test current seeding models and
study the relation among the first black holes formed in the universe and the cosmological environment in which they are born and they evolve. The main goal of this work is
to include a seeding prescription based on current theoretical models in the L-Galaxies semi-analytic code, and to study the cosmological evolution of the BH population
produced during the “seeding era” in the z > 10 universe.
1 - “SEEDING PROBLEM” and CURRENT MODELS 2 - CHOICE of the L-Galaxies SEMI-ANALITIC MODEL
Several recent observations show MBH ∼ 109−10 M⊙ SMBHs already in place when The low number-density of z ≥ 6 SMBHs suggests that these objects formed in the
the universe was only ∼ 1 Gyr old (e.g. Fan et al. 2016, Wang et al. 2017). To date, highest and rarest density peaks of the matter distribution in the young universe. On
two main scenarios have been proposed in order to explain the formation and growth of the other hand, the physical conditions required by their formation were reached at
these objects in the high-z universe: the so-called light- and heavy-seeding channels. z ≥ 10 inside mini-halos of virial mass Mvir ≈ 106−7 M⊙ (see e.g. Agarwal et al.
According to these two models, SMBHs formation might be either the evolutionary 2012, Dijkstra, Ferrara & Mesinger 2014, Valiante et al. 2017). As a consequence,
outcome of early, PoPIII star formation episodes or the result of dynamical instabilities both a wide (simulated) cosmological volume and a high mass resolution would be
within either pristine, massive gas clouds or dense nuclear star clusters in young star- necessary in order to study the formation of the first black holes with sufficient statistics
forming halos (e.g. Volonteri 2010, Latif & Ferrara 2016, Valiante et al. 2017). Figure while properly resolving the mini-halos hosting seeding processes.
1 summarises the current seeding scenarios. If combined, the Millennium (Springel et al. 2005) large-scale, cosmological box and
the MillenniumII (Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2009) high resolution (respectively: Lbox =
500 Mpc/h and Mres halo ∼ 10 8
M⊙) provide an optimal compromise between wide
simulated volume and mass resolution. Consequently, we base our work on the state-
of-the-art L-Galaxies semi-analytic model (Guo et al. 2011, Henriques et al. 2015)
which is built and optimised on both Millennium and MillenniumII merger trees.
The model includes recipes for several physical processes such as infall and cooling of
primordial-gas in dark matter (DM) halos, star formation and supernovae feedback,
metal enrichment of gas components inside galaxies and growth of massive black holes.
Figure : Summary of current seeding scenarios. Left branch: light-seeding channel leading to the formation of PoPIII The model follows the evolution of galaxies inside their DM halos from z ≥ 50 up to
remnants with Minitial ∼ 10 2
M . Right branch: heavy-seeding channel in which M initial
∼ 10 3−5
M⊙ seeds are
seed ⊙ seed
formed via dynamical instabilities in either nuclear star clusters or pristine, low-metallicity halos.
z = 0 and is able to reproduce with striking precision many observational constraints
over a wide range of redshifts (see Henriques et al. 2015 for details).Despite this,
Given the short time available, and assuming Eddington-limited mass growth, light BH the latest version of the L-Galaxies code does not include a prescription for the
seeds must accrete mass almost uninterruptedly in order to become SMBHs at z ∼ 6. formation and evolution of high-redshift SMBHs and, moreover, it assumes that each
The actual ability of maintaining extreme mass-accretion rates for long periods is still galaxy formed has a BH with Minitial = 0 which grows in time via instantaneous
BH
highly debated (e.g. Johnson & Bromm 2007, Madau et al. 2014). One possible mass accretion. This prescription is clearly extremely distant from current high-z
solution is to allow light seeds to grow via short “bursts” of super-Eddington accretion seeding models. In summary, the state-of-the-art semi-analytic model L-Galaxies
(e.g. Volonteri et al.2015, Pezzulli et al. 2017). A second possibility is offered by offers a unique opportunity to implement high-z BH seeding processes and study the
the formation of heavy-seeds (MBH ∼ 104−5 M⊙) which can grow at lower rates evolution of the resulting BH-seeds population in their cosmological environment, a
for shorter periods (e.g. Volonteri, Lodato & Natarajan 2008, Pacucci, Volonteri & still poorly explored topic in the context of semi-analytic models.
Ferrara 2015). Nevertheless, the actual possibility forming heavy seeds in the high-z
universe is still controversial (e.g. Agarwal et al. 2017). 3 - PRELIMINARY SEEDING RECIPES
We implemented the first, extremely simple, seeding recipes in order to introduce a
4 - RESULTS non-zero initial BH mass in L-Galaxies and test the response of the model to this
modification. In particular, we defined two basic prescriptions:
1) un-constrained seeding until z = 0:
- PoPIII remnant (MBH = 102 M⊙) in every newly virialised halo at any z;
- heavy seed (MBH = 105 M⊙) in all merger remnants hosting a BH of MBH <
105 M⊙, at any z.
2) un-constrained seeding until z = 10:
- PoPIII remnant (MBH = 102 M⊙) in every newly virialised halo, until z ≥ 10;
5
- heavy seed (MBH = 10 M⊙) in all merger remnants hosting a BH of MBH <
105 M⊙, until z ≥ 10.
These very rough recipes do not account for any physical condition of primordial gas
(as, for instance, its metallicity or ability to fragment). Nevertheless, the outcome
of these preliminary prescriptions shows an interesting population of “dormant BHs”
who never grew in their entire evolution (figure 2, violet circles in top and bottom-left
panels). The existence of dormant BHs is independent on when the seeding processes
end (figure 2, top panels). These objects are hosted in low-mass galaxies which never
underwent a merger during their evolution (figure 2, bottom right panel). If confirmed
once seeding and growth prescriptions will be completely developed, this finding will
Figure : Summary of the preliminary seeding recipes results, when applied to the MillenniumII merger be of extreme interest in order to study the BHs-host cosmological co-evolution.
trees. Top panels: the BH mass function (BHMF) at z = 0 shows a prominent spike at MBH =
MPoPIII = 10 2
M ⊙ . This is due to a population of BHs seeds who never grew during their entire 5 - FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
seed
evolution (bottom-left panel: the peak in the BHMF at MBH = 102 M⊙ is always present, at any z). The next step of this work will include in the model:
The existence of this population does not depend on the time at which the seeding process ends, as seen - the metal pollution of IGM medium and primordial infall;
both in top-left and top-right panel. Finally, bottom-right panel shows the median MBH − vs − Mhalo - the dependency of seeding processes on gas metallicity;
relation for all halos at z = 0 (black solid line). Blue squares are “dormant” BHs, which preferentially
populate the low-mass end of the distribution. They are sistematically above the median relation - the presence of a photo-ionising background (needed for DCBH seeding);
suggesting that their host evolved in isolation since the time of seeding. - the in-homogeneous metal enrichment of the inter-galactic medium.
Contacts: dspinoso@cefca.es ; sbonoli@cefca.es ; dizquierdo@cefca.es