James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: Force-feeding Supermassive Black Holes with Dissipative Dark Matter

Paper abstract: Supermassive black holes with masses \gtrsim 10^9\,M_\odot have been discovered by JWST at high redshifts (z~ 7). It is difficult to explain such objects as the result of accretive growth of stellar-mass seeds, as the rate at which baryons can be fed to the black hole is limited by the radiation pressure of the infalling matter. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism to create the early progenitors: the collapse of small dark matter halos through a dissipative cooling mechanism in the dark sector. These small black holes can then be efficiently fed with additional dissipative dark matter due to the comparatively weak interactions between the dark radiation and dark matter, which results in a very short Eddington time and high accretion rates.