On the Origin of Supermassive Black Holes

by Jonathan Tan (Chalmers Univ. & Univ. of Virginia)

Wednesday 15 Jun 2022, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

Albano 3: 6228 - Mega (22 seats) (Albano Building 3)

Hybrid talk: Mega (6228, Hus 3, Albano) + https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/530682073

I discuss one of the most pressing open questions in cosmic origins studies: how do the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that reside in the centers of most large galaxies come into being? After a review of different ideas, I present a model that aims to explain the birth of all SMBHs via a single mechanism and involves them being among the very first objects to form after the Big Bang, from special Population III star-forming dark matter minihalos (Pop III.1 sources) . Such a model can naturally explain the minimum mass scale of SMBHs of ~100,000 solar masses, predicts all SMBH are in place by z~25, and that the sources have relatively low levels of spatial clustering. The mechanism relies on dark matter self-annihilation changing the structure of Pop III.1 protostars and so also places constraints on the nature of dark matter. I discuss various observational tests of this scenario.

Tan_2022-Jun-15.mp4