Schedule Feb 17, 2012
Early Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) from a Direct Collapse
Jun-Hwan Choi (Univ. of Kentucky)

Currently, two options appear viable in forming the SMBHs at high redshifts: the hierarchical assembly versus a direct collapse. We implement the series of numerical simulations to study the gas collapse in the midst of dark matter halos using an AMR code ENZO. Our results show that, under certain conditions, the infalling gas leads to the formation a transient disk-like configuration at the center which is subject to a runaway collapse to very high densities, supplemented by a catastrophic loss of its angular momentum. However, not all initial conditions lead to this outcome --- e.g., disks that are not centrally concentrated do not exhibit the unstable behavior. We find that under particular conditions, the direct collapse within dark matter halos can lead to dynamical phenomena which may lead to the formation of the SMBHs.


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