Direct collapse to SMBH seeds in cosmological halos with radiation transfer

AbstractWe present results of our zoom-in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of direct collapse (DC) to supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds with radiative transfer (RT). The DC has been modeled in dark matter halos of ∼108M⊙, using adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code Enzo. For the first time, the baryonic collapse has been followed down to 10−7 pc (∼0.01 AU) with on-the-fly RT and the flux-limited diffusion (FLD) approximation. We find a complex behavior involving accretion flow and associated outflows driven by the radiation force. The resulting gas dynamics around the central density peak differs profoundly from that in previous works which adopted adiabatic approximation in the core. The core forms with a photosphere at ∼1 AU, and its growth starts to saturate at ∼100M⊙. The unrelaxed core radiates intermittently near the Eddington luminosity, correlated with strong anisotropic outflows.