Rapid growth of seed black holes in the early universe by supra-exponential accretion
Aug 7, 2014Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
Mass accretion by black holes (BHs) is typically capped at the Eddington rate, when radiation's push balances gravity's pull. However, even exponential growth at the Eddington-limited e-folding time t_E ~ few x 0.01 Gyr, is too slow to grow stellar-mass BH seeds into the supermassive luminous quasars that are observed when the universe is 1 Gyr old. We propose a dynamical mechanism that can trigger supra-exponential accretion in the early universe, when a BH seed is trapped in a star cluster fed by the ubiquitous dense cold gas flows. The high gas opacity traps the accretion radiation, while the low-mass BH's random motions suppress the formation of a slowly-draining accretion disk. Supra-exponential growth can thus explain the puzzling emergence of supermassive BHs that power luminous quasars so soon after the Big Bang.Note:
- in Science Express: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/06/science.1251053 18 pages (main article and supplementary materials) and 3 figures. T. Alexander, P. Natarajan, Science, 7 August 2014
References(12)
Figures(3)
- [44]
- [45]
- [46]
- [47]
- [48]
- [49]
- [50]
- [51]
- [52]
- [53]
- [54]