Published November 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Feedback-regulated seed black hole growth in star-forming molecular clouds and galactic nuclei

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics

Abstract

Context. The detection of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in high-redshift luminous quasars may require a phase of rapid accretion, and as a precondition, substantial gas influx toward seed black holes (BHs) from kiloparsec or parsec scales. Our previous research demonstrated the plausibility of such gas supply for BH seeds within star-forming giant molecular clouds (GMCs) with high surface density (∼10⁴ M⊙ pc⁻²), facilitating "hyper-Eddington" accretion via efficient feeding by dense clumps, which are driven by turbulence and stellar feedback. Aims. This article presents an investigation of the impacts of feedback from accreting BHs on this process, including radiation, mechanical jets, and highly relativistic cosmic rays. Methods. We ran a suite of numerical simulations to explore diverse parameter spaces of BH feedback, including the subgrid accretion model, feedback energy efficiency, mass loading factor, and initial metallicity. Results. Using radiative feedback models inferred from the slim disk, we find that hyper-Eddington accretion is still achievable, yielding BH bolometric luminosities of as high as 10⁴¹ − 10⁴⁴ erg/s, depending on the GMC properties and specific feedback model assumed. We find that the maximum possible mass growth of seed BHs (ΔM_(max)^(BH)) is regulated by the momentum-deposition rate from BH feedback, ṗfeedback/(Ṁ_(BH)c), which leads to an analytic scaling that agrees well with simulations. This scenario predicts the rapid formation of ∼10⁴ M⊙ intermediate-massive BHs (IMBHs) from stellar-mass BHs within ∼1 Myr. Furthermore, we examine the impacts of subgrid accretion models and how BH feedback may influence star formation within these cloud complexes.

Copyright and License

© The Authors 2024.

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

Support for the authors was provided by NSF Research Grants 1911233, 20009234, 2108318, NSF CAREER grant 1455342, NASA grants 80NSSC18K0562, HST-AR15800. Numerical calculations were run on the Caltech compute cluster “Wheeler”, allocations AST21010 and AST20016 supported by the NSF and TACC, and NASA HEC SMD-16-7592. A public version of the GIZMO code is available at http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~phopkins/Site/GIZMO.html. YS acknowledges the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), [funding reference number 568580].

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2405.12164 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Software: http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~phopkins/Site/GIZMO.html (URL)

Funding

National Science Foundation
AST-1911233
National Science Foundation
20009234
National Science Foundation
AST-2108318
National Science Foundation
AST-1455342
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC18K0562
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
HST-AR15800
National Science Foundation
AST21010
National Science Foundation
AST20016
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
SMD-16-7592
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
568580

Dates

Accepted
2024-09-12
Accepted
Available
2024-10-29
Published Online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Publication Status
Published