The direct collapse model for the formation of massive black holes has gained increased support as it provides a natural explanation for the appearance of bright quasars already less than a billion ...years from the Big Bang. In this paper we review a recent scenario for direct collapse that relies on multi-scale gas inflows initiated by the major merger of massive gas-rich galaxies at z > 6, where gas has already achieved solar composition. Hydrodynamical simulations undertaken to explore our scenario show that supermassive, gravitationally bound compact gaseous disks weighing a billion solar masses, only a few pc in size, form in the nuclei of merger remnants in less than 105 yr. These could later produce a supermassive protostar or supermassive star at their center via various mechanisms. Moreover, we present a new analytical model, based on angular momentum transport in mass-loaded gravitoturbulent disks. This naturally predicts that a nuclear disk accreting at rates exceeding yr−1, as seen in the simulations, is stable against fragmentation irrespective of its metallicity. This is at variance with conventional direct collapse scenarios, which require the suppression of gas cooling in metal-free protogalaxies for gas collapse to take place. Such high accretion rates reflect the high free-fall velocities in massive halos appearing only at z < 10, and occur naturally as a result of the efficient angular momentum loss provided by the merger dynamics. We discuss the implications of our scenario on the observed population of high-z quasars and on its evolution to lower redshifts using a semi-analytical galaxy formation model. Finally, we consider the intriguing possibility that the secondary gas inflows in the unstable disks might drive gas to collapse into a supermassive black hole directly via the General Relativistic radial instability. Such dark collapse route could generate gravitational wave emission detectable via the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).
Observations show a prevalence of high-redshift galaxies with large stellar masses and predominantly passive stellar populations. A variety of processes have been suggested that could reduce the star ...formation in such galaxies to observed levels, including quasar mode feedback, virial shock heating, or galactic winds driven by stellar feedback. However, the main quenching mechanisms have yet to be identified. Here we study the origin of star formation quenching using Argo, a cosmological, hydrodynamical zoom-in simulation that follows the evolution of a massive galaxy at z ~ 2. This simulation adopts the same subgrid recipes of the Eris simulations, which have been shown to form realistic disc galaxies, and, in one version, adopts also a mass and spatial resolution identical to Eris. The resulting galaxy has properties consistent with those of observed, massive (M* ~ 10... M...) galaxies at z ~ 2 and with abundance matching predictions. Our models do not include active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback indicating that supermassive black holes likely play a subordinate role in determining masses and sizes of massive galaxies at high-z. The specific star formation rate (sSFR) of the simulated galaxy matches the observed M*-sSFR relation at early times. This period of smooth stellar mass growth comes to a sudden halt at z = 3.5 when the sSFR drops by almost an order of magnitude within a few hundred Myr. The suppression is initiated by a levelling off and a subsequent reduction of the cool gas accretion rate on to the galaxy, and not by feedback processes. This 'cosmological starvation' occurs as the parent dark matter halo switches from a fast collapsing mode to a slow accretion mode. Additional mechanisms, such as perhaps radio mode feedback from an AGN, are needed to quench any residual star formation of the galaxy and to maintain a low sSFR until the present time. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
We analyze the formation and evolution of the stellar components in "Eris," a 120 pc resolution cosmological hydrodynamic simulation of a late-type spiral galaxy. The simulation includes the effects ...of a uniform UV background, a delayed-radiative-cooling scheme for supernova feedback, and a star formation recipe based on a high gas density threshold. It allows a detailed study of the relative contributions of "in-situ" (within the main host) and "ex-situ" (within satellite galaxies) star formation to each major Galactic component in a close Milky Way analog. We investigate these two star-formation channels as a function of galactocentric distance, along different lines of sight above and along the disk plane, and as a function of cosmic time. We find that: (1) approximately 70% of today's stars formed in-situ; (2) more than two thirds of the ex-situ stars formed within satellites after infall; (3) the majority of ex-situ stars are found today in the disk and in the bulge; (4) the stellar halo is dominated by ex-situ stars, whereas in-situ stars dominate the mass profile at distances <, ~5 kpc from the center at high latitudes; and (5) approximately 25% of the inner, r <, ~ 20 kpc, halo is composed of in-situ stars that have been displaced from their original birth sites during Eris' early assembly history.
We study the effect of sub-grid physics, galaxy mass, structural parameters and resolution on the fragmentation of gas-rich galaxy discs into massive star-forming clumps. The initial conditions are ...set up with the aid of the ARGO cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. Blast-wave feedback does not suppress fragmentation, but reduces both the number of clumps and the duration of the unstable phase. Once formed, bound clumps cannot be destroyed by our feedback model. Widespread fragmentation is promoted by high gas fractions and low halo concentrations. Yet giant clumps M > 108 M⊙ lasting several hundred Myr are rare and mainly produced by clump–clump mergers. They occur in massive discs with maximum rotational velocities V
max > 250 km s−1 at z ∼ 2, at the high-mass end of the observed galaxy population at those redshifts. The typical gaseous and stellar masses of clumps in all runs are in the range ∼107–108 M⊙ for galaxies with disc mass in the range 1010–8 × 1010 M⊙. Clumps sizes are usually in the range 100–400 pc, in agreement with recent clump observations in lensed high-z galaxies. We argue that many of the giant clumps identified in observations are not due to in situ fragmentation, or are the result of blending of smaller structures owing to insufficient resolution. Using an analytical model describing local collapse inside spiral arms, we can predict the characteristic gaseous masses of clumps at the onset of fragmentation (∼3–5 × 107 M⊙) quite accurately, while the conventional Toomre mass overestimates them. Due to their moderate masses, clumps which migrate to the centre have marginal effect on bulge growth.
We carry out simulations of gravitationally unstable disks using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the novel Lagrangian meshless finite mass (MFM) scheme in the GIZMO code. Our aim is to ...understand the cause of the nonconvergence of the cooling boundary for fragmentation reported in the literature. We run SPH simulations with two different artificial viscosity implementations and compare them with MFM, which does not employ any artificial viscosity. With MFM we demonstrate convergence of the critical cooling timescale for fragmentation at . Nonconvergence persists in SPH codes. We show how the nonconvergence problem is caused by artificial fragmentation triggered by excessive dissipation of angular momentum in domains with large velocity derivatives. With increased resolution, such domains become more prominent. Vorticity lags behind density, due to numerical viscous dissipation in these regions, promoting collapse with longer cooling times. Such effect is shown to be dominant over the competing tendency of artificial viscosity to diminish with increasing resolution. When the initial conditions are first relaxed for several orbits, the flow is more regular, with lower shear and vorticity in nonaxisymmetric regions, aiding convergence. Yet MFM is the only method that converges exactly. Our findings are of general interest, as numerical dissipation via artificial viscosity or advection errors can also occur in grid-based codes. Indeed, for the FARGO code values of significantly higher than our converged estimate have been reported in the literature. Finally, we discuss implications for giant planet formation via disk instability.
Satellites of giant planets have been thought to form in gaseous circumplanetary disks (CPDs) during the late planet-formation phase, but it was unknown whether or not smaller-mass planets such as ...the ice giants could form such disks, and thus moons, there. We combined radiative hydrodynamical simulations with satellite population synthesis to investigate the question in the case of Uranus and Neptune. For both ice giants we found that a gaseous CPD is created at the end of their formation. The population synthesis confirmed that Uranian-like, icy, prograde satellite system could form in these CPDs within a couple of 105 yr. This means that Neptune could have a Uranian-like moon system originally that was wiped away by the capture of Triton. Furthermore, the current moons of Uranus can be reproduced by our model without the need for planet-planet impact to create a debris disk for the moons to grow. These results highlight that even ice giants-among the most common mass category of exoplanets-can also form satellites, opening a way to a potentially much larger population of exomoons than previously thought.
ABSTRACT Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in galaxies with a sizable mass. It is expected that a pair of SMBHs originally in the nuclei of two merging galaxies would form a binary and ...eventually coalesce via a burst of gravitational waves. So far, theoretical models and simulations, focusing only on limited phases of the orbital decay of SMBHs under idealized conditions of the galaxy hosts, have been unable to directly predict the SMBH merger timescale from ab-initio galaxy formation theory. The predicted SMBH merger timescales are long, of order Gyrs, which could be problematic for future gravitational wave (GW) searches. Here, we present the first multi-scale ΛCDM cosmological simulation that follows the orbital decay of a pair of SMBHs in a merger of two typical massive galaxies at , all the way to the final coalescence driven by GW emission. The two SMBHs, with masses , settle quickly in the nucleus of the merger remnant. The remnant is triaxial and extremely dense due to the dissipative nature of the merger and the intrinsic compactness of galaxies at high redshift. Such properties naturally allow a very efficient hardening of the SMBH binary. The SMBH merger occurs in only ∼10 Myr after the galactic cores have merged, which is two orders of magnitude smaller than the Hubble time.
We present a semi-analytical population synthesis model of protoplanetary clumps formed by disk instability at radial distances of 80-120 au. Various clump density profiles, initial mass functions, ...protoplanetary disk models, stellar masses, and gap opening criteria are considered. When we use more realistic gap opening criteria, we find that gaps open only rarely, which strongly affects clump survival rates and their physical properties (mass, radius, and radial distance). The inferred surviving population is then shifted toward less massive clumps at smaller radial distances. We also find that populations of surviving clumps are very sensitive to the model assumptions and used parameters. Depending on the chosen parameters, the protoplanets occupy a mass range between 0.01 and 16 MJ and may either orbit close to the central star or as far out as 75 au, with a sweet spot at 10-30 au for the massive ones. However, in all of the cases we consider, we find that massive giant planets at very large radial distances are rare, in qualitative agreement with current direct imaging surveys. We conclude that caution should be taken in deriving population synthesis models as well as when comparing the models' results with observations.
We study the orbital decay of a pair of massive black holes (BHs) with masses and 107 , using hydrodynamical simulations of circumnuclear disks (CNDs) with the alternating presence of sub-grid ...physics, such as radiative cooling, star formation, supernova feedback, BH accretion, and BH feedback. In the absence of such processes, the orbit of the secondary BH decays over timescales of to the center of the CND, where the primary BH resides. When strong dissipation operates in CNDs, fragmentation into massive objects the size of giant molecular clouds with densities in the range 104-107 amu cm−3 occurs, causing stochastic torques and hits that can eject the secondary BH from the midplane. Outside the plane, the low-density medium provides only weak drag, and the BH return is governed by inefficient dynamical friction. In rare cases, clump-BH interactions can lead to a faster decay. Feedback processes lead to outflows, but do not significantly change the overall density of the CND midplane. However, with a spherically distributed BH feedback, a hot bubble is generated behind the secondary, which almost shuts off dynamical friction. We dub this phenomenon "wake evacuation." It leads to delays in the decay, possibly of . We discuss the non-trivial implications on the discovery space of the eLISA telescope. Our results suggest that the largest uncertainty in predicting BH merger rates lies in the potentially wide variety of galaxy host systems, with different degrees of gas dissipation and heating, yielding decay timescales from to .
We use 1-kpc resolution cosmological Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) simulations of a Virgo-like galaxy cluster to investigate the effect of feedback from supermassive black holes on the mass ...distribution of dark matter, gas and stars. We compared three different models: (i) a standard galaxy formation model featuring gas cooling, star formation and supernovae feedback, (ii) a 'quenching' model for which star formation is artificially suppressed in massive haloes and finally (iii) the recently proposed active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback model of Booth and Schaye. Without AGN feedback (even in the quenching case), our simulated cluster suffers from a strong overcooling problem, with a stellar mass fraction significantly above observed values in M87. The baryon distribution is highly concentrated, resulting in a strong adiabatic contraction (AC) of dark matter. With AGN feedback, on the contrary, the stellar mass in the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) lies below observational estimates and the overcooling problem disappears. The stellar mass of the BCG is seen to increase with increasing mass resolution, suggesting that our stellar masses converge to the correct value from below. The gas and total mass distributions are in better agreement with observations. We also find a slight deficit (∼10 per cent) of baryons at the virial radius, due to the combined effect of AGN-driven convective motions in the inner parts and shock waves in the outer regions, pushing gas to Mpc scales and beyond. This baryon deficit results in a slight adiabatic expansion of the dark matter distribution that can be explained quantitatively by AC theory.
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