Formation of the First Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe

Abstract

To explain the formation of the first supermassive black holes in the universe, we present a scenario based on direct collapse of baryonic gas in massive halos at high redshift. We test this scenario with the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code Enzo using the computational facilities of the LRZ. We have performed first simulations on the direct collapse problem which demonstrate that such an AMR code can be successfully used to examine this collapse. Based on these results, we plan to resolve collapse to smaller scales and include deuterium chemistry, as the HD molecule gives important cooling contributions at the temperatures found in our simulation. Understanding black hole formation in the early universe will help to predict the evolution of the black hole population and lead to more accurate predictions for the gravitational wave interferometer LISA.