Growth of massive black holes in FFB galaxies at cosmic dawn

¹ Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
² SCIPP, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
³ Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author; dekel@huji.ac.il

Received: 27 September 2024
Accepted: 3 February 2025

Abstract

Aims. The scenario of feedback-free starbursts (FFB), which predicts excessively bright galaxies at cosmic dawn as observed using JWST, may provide a natural setting for black hole (BH) growth. This involves the formation of intermediate-mass seed BHs and their runaway mergers into super-massive BHs with high BH-to-stellar mass ratios and low Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) luminosities.

Methods. We present a scenario of merger-driven BH growth in FFB galaxies and study its feasibility.

Results. Black hole seeds form within the building blocks of the FFB galaxies, namely, thousands of compact star clusters, each starbursting in a free-fall time of a few million years before the onset of stellar and supernova feedback. The BH seeds form by rapid core collapse in the FFB clusters, in a few free-fall times, which is sped up by the migration of massive stars due to the young, broad stellar mass function and stimulated by a “gravo-gyro” instability due to internal cluster rotation and flattening. BHs of ∼10⁴ M_⊙ are expected in ∼10⁶ M_⊙ FFB clusters within sub-kiloparsec galactic disks at z​ ∼ ​10. The BHs then migrate to the galaxy center by dynamical friction, hastened by the compact FFB stellar galactic disk configuration. Efficient mergers of the BH seeds will produce ∼10^6 − 8 M_⊙ BHs with a BH-to-stellar mass ratio ∼0.01 by z​ ∼ ​4 − 7, as observed. The growth of the central BH by mergers can overcome the bottleneck introduced by gravitational wave recoils if the BHs inspiral within a relatively cold disk or if the escape velocity from the galaxy is boosted by a wet compaction event. Such events, common in massive galaxies at high redshifts, can also help by speeding up the inward BH migration and by providing central gas to assist with the final parsec problem.

Conclusions. The cold disk version of the FFB scenario provides a feasible route for the formation of supermassive BHs.