Hunting the first Cosmic Giants: formation and detectability of Direct Collapse Black Holes around high-redshift quasars

Clicks: 1
ID: 319480
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal

Ranked #778 of 900 articles by views in monthly notices of the royal astronomical society

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 900 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract The rapid emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early Universe poses a challenge to current models of black hole growth. One promising formation pathway is the direct collapse black hole (DCBH) scenario, in which gas in pristine, low-metallicity halos forms supermassive (or quasi-) stars leading to massive black holes seeds under specific environmental conditions. In this work, we investigate the potential host environments of DCBHs by coupling a semi-analytic model tracing BH formation and galaxy co-evolution with high-resolution N-body dark matter merger trees. This allows us to trace the population of DCBHs formed during the hierarchical assembly of a ~1012 M⊙ dark matter halo hosting a bright 109 M⊙ quasar at redshift z ≈ 7. We find that, when accounting for local fluctuations in the UV radiation field within this early cosmic structure, massive BH seeds can form via direct collapse as early as z ≈ 22. Even under more stringent conditions for heavy seed formation, tens of DCBHs are predicted to emerge within the simulated overdensity down to z ~ 14, at which point metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium inhibits further episodes of direct collapse. A significant fraction of the massive black hole population formed at z > 14 is expected to survive in satellite galaxies that do not merge with the central halo down to z ≈ 7. We show that the existence of such a population of ungrown heavy BH seeds can be probed through deep JWST observations targeting regions surrounding bright high-redshift quasars, and we discuss tailored observational strategies to detect and identify these elusive systems.
Reference Key
openalex_W7167066322 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Alessandro Trinca, Alessandro Lupi, Zoltán Haiman, Marta Volonteri, Rosa Valiante, Raffaella Schneider, Roberto Decarli
Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1230
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1230
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.