The First Miniquasar

Abstract

We investigate the environmental impact of the first active galactic nuclei that may have formed ~150 Myr after the big bang in low-mass ~10^6 Msun minihaloes. Using Enzo, an adaptive-mesh refinement cosmological hydrodynamics code, we carry out three-dimensional simulations of the radiative feedback from `miniquasars' powered by intermediate-mass black holes. We follow the non-equilibrium multispecies chemistry of primordial gas in the presence of a point source of X-ray radiation, which starts shining in a rare high-sigma peak at z=21 and emits a power-law spectrum in the 0.2-10 keV range. We find that, after one Salpeter time-scale, the miniquasar has heated up the simulation box to a volume-averaged temperature of 2800 K. The mean electron and H2 fractions are now 0.03 and 4e-5: the latter is 20 times larger than the primordial value, and will delay the buildup of a uniform UV photodissociating background. The net effect of the X-rays is to reduce gas clumping in the IGM by as much as a factor of 3. While the suppression of baryonic infall lowers the gas mass fraction at overdensities delta in the range 20-2000, enhanced molecular cooling increases the amount of dense material at delta>2000. In many haloes within the proximity of our miniquasar the H2-boosting effect of X-rays is too weak to overcome heating, and the cold and dense gas mass actually decreases. We find little evidence for an entropy floor in gas at intermediate densities preventing gas contraction and H2 formation. Overall, the radiative feedback from X-rays enhances gas cooling in lower-sigma peaks that are far away from the initial site of star formation, thus decreasing the clustering bias of the early pregalactic population, but does not appear to dramatically reverse or promote the collapse of pregalactic clouds as a whole. (abridged)