Heavy Seed Black Hole Growth in Metal-Enriched Halos through Disk-Induced Stellar Disruptions: A Semi-Analytical Modelling
Abstract
Recent simulations suggest that heavy seed black holes may form in weakly metal-enriched atomic cooling halos, where the supermassive-star progenitor and small-scale stellar fragments emerge nearly coevally. In this picture, the newly born heavy seed is naturally embedded in a metal-enriched Pop~I/II nuclear star cluster rather than in an isolated pristine environment. We investigate whether disk-induced tidal disruption events (TDEs) from these Pop~I/II stars can provide an efficient and sustained growth channel for heavy seed black holes. We construct a semi-analytical model for stellar orbital damping, disk capture, migration, and tidal disruption around a heavy seed black hole, and incorporate the resulting disk-induced TDE contribution into cosmological merger trees with baryonic and metallicity evolution. Heavy seed host halos are selected from atomic cooling halos with Z≲10−3Z⊙ that satisfy either a rapid gas-inflow criterion or a strong Lyman--Werner radiation criterion. We find that disk-induced Pop~I/II TDEs can dominate the early growth of heavy seeds: the median black hole mass grows from ∼104 M⊙ to ∼105 M⊙ within the first ∼0.1 Gyr after seed formation, and reaches several 105 M⊙ by ∼0.2 Gyr. The cumulative mass supplied by TDEs initially exceeds that from gas accretion and remains comparable over the first ∼200 Myr. Including disk-induced TDEs shifts the black hole population toward higher masses, increases the abundance of massive black holes at z∼9--10, and produces larger black hole-to-stellar mass ratios. This channel helps alleviate, but does not fully remove, the tension between heavy-seed models and the most extreme high-redshift black hole candidates, suggesting that additional growth mechanisms may still be required.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026heavy,
title = {{Heavy Seed Black Hole Growth in Metal-Enriched Halos through Disk-Induced Stellar Disruptions: A Semi-Analytical Modelling}},
author = {Zijian Wang and Zhili Wang and Yiqiu Ma and Boyuan Liu and Zheng Cai and Mengye Wang and Qingwen Wu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12619},
eprint = {2609.12619},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12619},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Heavy Seed Black Hole Growth in Metal-Enriched Halos through Disk-Induced Stellar Disruptions: A Semi-Analytical Modelling
AU - Zijian Wang
AU - Zhili Wang
AU - Yiqiu Ma
AU - Boyuan Liu
AU - Zheng Cai
AU - Mengye Wang
AU - Qingwen Wu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12619
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12619
AB - Recent simulations suggest that heavy seed black holes may form in weakly metal-enriched atomic cooling halos, where the supermassive-star progenitor and small-scale stellar fragments emerge nearly coevally. In this picture, the newly born heavy seed is naturally embedded in a metal-enriched Pop~I/II nuclear star cluster rather than in an isolated pristine environment. We investigate whether disk-induced tidal disruption events (TDEs) from these Pop~I/II stars can provide an efficient and sustained growth channel for heavy seed black holes. We construct a semi-analytical model for stellar orbital damping, disk capture, migration, and tidal disruption around a heavy seed black hole, and incorporate the resulting disk-induced TDE contribution into cosmological merger trees with baryonic and metallicity evolution. Heavy seed host halos are selected from atomic cooling halos with Z≲10^−3Z_⊙ that satisfy either a rapid gas-inflow criterion or a strong Lyman--Werner radiation criterion. We find that disk-induced Pop~I/II TDEs can dominate the early growth of heavy seeds: the median black hole mass grows from ∼10^4 M_⊙ to ∼10^5 M_⊙ within the first ∼0.1 Gyr after seed formation, and reaches several 10^5 M_⊙ by ∼0.2 Gyr. The cumulative mass supplied by TDEs initially exceeds that from gas accretion and remains comparable over the first ∼200 Myr. Including disk-induced TDEs shifts the black hole population toward higher masses, increases the abundance of massive black holes at z∼9--10, and produces larger black hole-to-stellar mass ratios. This channel helps alleviate, but does not fully remove, the tension between heavy-seed models and the most extreme high-redshift black hole candidates, suggesting that additional growth mechanisms may still be required.
ER -