First identification of direct collapse black hole candidates in the early Universe in CANDELS/GOODS-S

Abstract

The first black hole seeds, formed when the Universe was younger than ∼500 Myr, are recognized to play an important role for the growth of early (z ∼ 7) supermassive black holes. While progresses have been made in understanding their formation and growth, their observational signatures remain largely unexplored. As a result, no detection of such sources has been confirmed so far. Supported by numerical simulations, we present a novel photometric method to identify black hole seed candidates in deep multiwavelength surveys. We predict that these highly obscured sources are characterized by a steep spectrum in the infrared (1.6-4.5 μm), I.e. by very red colours. The method selects the only two objects with a robust X-ray detection found in the CANDELS/GOODS-S survey with a photometric redshift z ≳ 6. Fitting their infrared spectra only with a stellar component would require unrealistic star formation rates (≳2000 M_⊙ yr^-1). To date, the selected objects represent the most promising black hole seed candidates, possibly formed via the direct collapse black hole scenario, with predicted mass >10⁵ M_⊙. While this result is based on the best photometric observations of high-z sources available to date, additional progress is expected from spectroscopic and deeper X-ray data. Upcoming observatories, like the JWST, will greatly expand the scope of this work.