Formation of the First Supermassive Black Holes

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Abstract
We consider the physical conditions under which supermassive black holes could have formed inside the first galaxies. Our SPH simulations indicate that metal-free galaxies with a virial temperature ~10^4 K and with suppressed H2 formation (due to an intergalactic UV background) tend to form a binary black hole system which contains a substantial fraction (>10%) of the total baryonic mass of the host galaxy. Fragmentation into stars is suppressed without substantial H2 cooling. Our simulations follow the condensation of ~5x10^6 M_sun around the two centers of the binary down to a scale of < 0.1pc. Low-spin galaxies form a single black hole instead. These early black holes lead to quasar activity before the epoch of reionization. Primordial black hole binaries lead to the emission of gravitational radiation at redshifts z>10 that would be detectable by LISA.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, revised version, ApJ in press (October 10, 2003

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