DISTRIBUTION OF THE VERY FIRST POPULATION Ⅲ STARS AND THEIR RELATION TO BRIGHT z ≈ 6 QUASARS

摘要

We discuss the link between dark matter halos hosting the first Population Ⅲ stars and the rare, massive halos that are generally considered to host bright quasars at high redshift (z ≈ 6). The main question that we intend to answer is whether the supermassive black holes powering these QSOs grew out from the seeds planted by the first intermediate-mass black holes created in the universe. This question involves a dynamical range of 10~(13) in mass, and we address it by combining N-body simulations of structure formation to identify the most massive halos at z ≈ 6 with a Monte Carlo method based on linear theory to obtain the location and formation times of the first-light halos within the whole simulation box. We show that the descendants of the first ≈10~6 M_☉ virialized halos do not, on average, end in the most massive halos at z ≈ 6, but rather live in a large variety of environments. The oldest Population Ⅲ progenitors of the most massive halos at z ≈ 6 form instead from density peaks that are on average 1.5 σ more common than the first Population Ⅲ star formed in the volume occupied by one bright high-z QSO. The intermediate-mass black hole seeds planted by the very first Population Ⅲ stars at z approx ＞ 40 can easily grow to masses m_(BH) ＞ 10~(9.5) M_☉ by z = 6 assuming Eddington accretion with radiative efficiency ∈ approx ＜ 0.1. Quenching of the black hole accretion is therefore crucial to avoid an overabundance of supermassive black holes at lower redshift. This can be obtained if the mass accretion is limited to a fraction η ≈ 6 × 10~(-3) of the total baryon mass of the halo hosting the black hole. The resulting high-end slope ofthe black hole mass function at z = 6 is α ≈ -3.7, a value within the 1 σ error bar for the bright-end slope of the observed quasar luminosity function at z = 6.