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First Stars III
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Talk
Title: Formation and Growth of the First Supermassive Black Holes Presenter: Mitchell Begelman Abstract: I will argue that supermassive black hole seeds could have formed via the direct infall and collapse of gas in pregalactic haloes at redshifts ~10-20, without the intermediate stage of Pop III star formation. Global gravitational instabilities get rid of excess angular momentum, and the infalling gas forms a self-gravitating, optically thick structure - a "quasistar". As matter piles on, the core of the quasistar heats up until it undergoes runaway neutrino cooling and collapses to form a 10 solar mass black hole. The black hole then grows by accreting from the quasistar at an extremely super-Eddington rate, reaching thousands of solar masses in less than a million years. Concurrently, the quasistar expands to form a radiation pressure-dominated, convective envelope reminiscent of a red giant but with Pop III abundances. I will discuss the structure and evolution of quasistars and their detectability with the James Webb Space Telescope.
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