Super-Eddington Mass Growth of Intermediate-mass Black Holes Embedded in Dusty Circumnuclear Disks

Abstract

Abstract We perform the first three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamical simulations that investigate the growth of intermediate-mass BHs (IMBHs) embedded in massive self-gravitating, dusty nuclear accretion disks. We explore the dependence of mass accretion efficiency on the gas metallicity Z and mass injection at super-Eddington accretion rates from the outer galactic disk M ̇ in , and we find that the central BH can be fed at rates exceeding the Eddington rate only when the dusty disk becomes sufficiently optically thick to ionizing radiation. In this case, mass outflows from the disk owing to photoevaporation are suppressed, and thus a large fraction (≳40%) of the mass injection rate can feed the central BH. The conditions are expressed as M ̇ in > 2.2 × 10 − 1 M ⊙ yr − 1 ( 1 + Z / 10 − 2 Z ⊙ ) − 1 ( c s / 10 km s − 1 ) , where c s is the sound speed in the gaseous disk. With increasing numerical resolution, vigorous disk fragmentation reduces the disk surface density, and dynamical heating by formed clumps makes the disk geometrically thicker. As a result, the photoevaporative mass-loss rate rises and thus the critical injection rate increases for fixed metallicity. This process enables super-Eddington growth of BHs until the BH mass reaches M BH ∼ 10 7 – 8 M ⊙ , depending on the properties of the host dark-matter halo and metal-enrichment history. In the assembly of protogalaxies, seed BHs that form in overdense regions with a mass variance of 3–4σ at z ∼ 15–20 are able to undergo short periods of rapid growth and transit into the Eddington-limited growth phase afterward to be supermassive BHs observed at z > 6–7.