The growth of the gargantuan black holes powering high-redshift quasars and their impact on the formation of early galaxies and protoclusters

Abstract

ABSTRACT High-redshift quasars (z ≳ 6), powered by black holes (BHs) with large inferred masses, imply rapid BH growth in the early Universe. The most extreme examples have inferred masses of ∼109 M⊙ at z = 7.5 and ∼1010 M⊙ at z = 6.3. Such dramatic growth via gas accretion likely leads to significant energy input into the quasar host galaxy and its surroundings, however, few theoretical predictions of the impact of such objects currently exist. We present zoom-in simulations of a massive high-redshift protocluster, with our fiducial fable model incapable of reproducing the brightest quasars. With modifications to this model to promote early BH growth, such as earlier seeding and mildly super-Eddington accretion, such ‘gargantuan’ BHs can be formed. With this new model, simulated host dust masses and star formation rates are in good agreement with existing JWST and ALMA data from ultraluminous quasars. We find the quasar is often obscured as it grows, and that strong, ejective feedback is required to have a high probability of detecting the quasar in the rest-frame UV. Fast and energetic quasar-driven winds expel metal-enriched gas, leading to significant metal pollution of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) out to twice the virial radius. As central gas densities and pressures are reduced, we find weaker signals from the CGM in mock X-ray and Sunyaev–Zeldovich maps, whose detection – with proposed instruments such as Lynx, and even potentially presently with ALMA – can constrain quasar feedback.