2024/12/19 by Konstantinos Kritos, Ricarda S. Beckmann, Kritos, Konstantinos +13 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.15334
openalex publication_date 2024/12/19 · openalex created_date 2024/12/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Supermassive black holes are prevalent at the centers of massive galaxies, and their masses scale with galaxy properties, increasing evidence suggesting that these trends continue to low stellar masses. Seeds are needed for supermassive black holes, especially at the highest redshifts explored by the James Webb Space Telescope. We study the hierarchical merging of galaxies via cosmological merger trees and argue that the seeds of supermassive black holes formed in nuclear star clusters via stellar black hole mergers at early epochs. Observable tracers include intermediate-mass black holes, nuclear star clusters, and early gas accretion in host dwarf galaxies, along with a potentially detectable stochastic gravitational wave background, ejection of intermediate and supermassive black holes, and consequences of a significant population of tidal disruption events and extreme-mass ratio inspirals.