Smoking Guns of Infant Massive Seed Black Holes in the Early Universe

The existence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with ~10 billion times the mass of our sun (~ 10^10 Msun) when the universe was only 700 Myr old presents a grand challenge to the theories of black hole formation and growth. Developments in the last decade point to a direct-collapse black hole (DCBH) formation scenario to explain the observed SMBHs in the early universe. In this talk, I will provide observational predictions to detect and distinguish systems that hosts DCBHs in the early universe. The synthetic observations are derived by combining state-of-the-art, 3D cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations with a radiative transfer post-processing analysis tool. It is predicted that the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope might be able to detect and distinguish a young galaxy that hosts a DCBH at redshift 15 with as little as a 20,000-second total exposure time. Moreover, it is found that the massive seed black holes are another source of H2-dissociating radiation that can trigger further DCBH formation in nearby halos. These simulations lay the ground work for understanding one of the greatest challenges in astrophysics today – early super massive black hole formation.