1994/01/31 by Daniel J. Eisenstein, Abraham Loeb · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Angular momentum #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Cold dark matter #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark matter #Galaxy #Gravitation #Perturbation (astronomy) #Physics #Population #Quasar #Redshift #Scientific Research and Discoveries #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/175498
published as Astrophys.J.443:11,1995 · 18 pages and one file of 3 figures, uuencoded compressed tarred Postscript. Final extended version, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal (4/10/95 issue)
arxiv created 1994/11/17 · openalex publication_date 1995/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We show that seeds for quasar black holes could have originated from the initial cosmological collapse of overdense regions with unusually small rotation. The gas in these rare regions collapses into a compact disk that shrinks on a short viscous timescale. Using an analytical model, we calculate the low-spin tail of the probability distribution of angular momenta for objects that collapse out of a Gaussian random field of initial density perturbations. The population of low-spin systems is significant for any viable power spectrum of primordial density perturbations. Most objects form just above the cosmological Jeans mass ~105^ Msun_ at high redshifts z ~> 10. In the standard cold dark matter cosmology, the comoving density of 106-7^ Msun_ objects with viscous evolution times shorter than ~106-7^ years is ~10-3^(h/0.5)3^ Mpc-3^, comparable to the local density of bright galaxies. The seed black holes tend to reside within larger mass systems that collapse later and supply the gas needed for the bright quasar activity.