Unveiling early black holes with JWST
Abstract
The formation of direct collapse black hole seeds with masses ~104 - 105 ~M⊙ could help explain the assembly of supermassive black holes powering high redshift quasars. Conditions conducive to the formation of these massive initial seeds exist at high redshift. Halos hosting these massive seeds merge promptly with a nearby galaxy. These early stage mergers at high redshift produce a new class of transient galaxies that contain an accreting black hole that is over-massive compared to the newly acquired stellar component - Obese Black hole Galaxies (OBGs). During this phase, the accretion luminosity of the direct collapse black hole seed exceeds that of the acquired stellar component. Here we calculate the multi-wavelength spectrum of this short-lived OBG stage, and show that there exist unique observational signatures in long wavelengths spanning near, mid to far-infrared that should be detectable by instruments aboard the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
- Publication:
-
New Frontiers in Black Hole Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1017/S174392131700076X
- Bibcode:
- 2017IAUS..324..257N
- Keywords:
-
- black hole physics;
- cosmology: early universe;
- infra-red: galaxies