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What was the nature of the first seeds of supermassive black holes?
Origin of supermassive black holes is a major theoretical gap in our understanding of the Universe. There are several channels that can lead to formation of the first seeds of supermassive black holes
1) Remnants from the first generation of Population III stars
2) Runaway collisions of stars in Nuclear star clusters
3) Direct collapse of gas in pristine atomic cooling halos
We are developing novel prescriptions for physically consistent seeding of black holes for the next generation cosmological simulations
Gas density (top) and metallicity (bottom) distributions in high resolution zoom simulations of a particular region at different resolutions (increasing from left to right). Higher resolutions are able to reveal smaller black holes; they can also better resolve the processes involving seed formation such as star formation and metal enrichment.
Gravitational wave events from Lisa Interferometer Space Antenna and Pulsar Timing Arrays are likely to pose very strong constraints on seed formation
Merger rates for different seed masses. Here, all the black holes are seeded in regions with pristine gas and active star formation.
For more details, please refer to Bhowmick et al 2021
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