Supermassive Black Holes from Ultra-Strongly Self-Interacting Dark Matter
Abstract
We consider the cosmological consequences if a small fraction (f≲0.1) of the dark matter is ultra-strongly self-interacting, with an elastic self-interaction cross-section per unit mass σ≫1 cm^2/g. This possibility evades all current constraints that assume that the self-interacting component makes up the majority of the dark matter. Nevertheless, even a small fraction of ultra-strongly self-interacting dark matter (uSIDM) can have observable consequences on astrophysical scales. In particular, the uSIDM subcomponent can undergo gravothermal collapse and form seed black holes in the center of a halo. These seed black holes, which form within several hundred halo interaction times, contain a few percent of the total uSIDM mass in the halo. For reasonable values of σf, these black holes can form at high enough redshifts to grow to ∼10^9M_⊙ quasars by z≳6, alleviating tension within the standard ΛCDM cosmology. The ubiquitous formation of central black holes in halos could also create cores in dwarf galaxies by ejecting matter during binary black hole mergers, potentially resolving the "too big to fail" problem.
Additional Information
© 2015 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 December 27; accepted 2015 March 5; published 2015 May 12. We thank Shmulik Balberg, James Bullock, Renyue Chen, Phil Hopkins, Jun Koda, Sasha Muratov, Lisa Randall, Paul Shapiro, Stu Shapiro, Charles Steinhardt, and Naoki Yoshida for helpful discussions. We thank especially Sasha Muratov for measuring concentration parameters at high redshifts in the FIRE runs and providing us with the resulting halo catalogs. This research is funded in part by DOE Grant #DE-SC0011632, and by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant #776 to the Caltech Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_804_2_131.pdf
Submitted - 1501.00017v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 55801
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150316-133259467
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0011632
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- 776
- Created
-
2015-03-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Other Numbering System Name
- CALT-TH
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 2014-144