The growth of the gargantuan black holes powering high-redshift quasars and their impact on the formation of early galaxies and protoclusters

Understand

High-redshift quasars ($z\gtrsim6$), powered by black holes (BHs) with large inferred masses, imply rapid BH growth in the early Universe.

• The most extreme examples have inferred masses of $\sim \! 10^9\,$M$_\odot$ at $z = 7.5$ and $\sim \! 10^{10}\,$M$_\odot$ at $z = 6.3$.
• Such dramatic growth via gas accretion likely leads to significant energy input into the quasar host galaxy and its surroundings, however few theoretical predictions of the impact of such objects currently exist.
• We present zoom-in simulations of a massive high-redshift protocluster, with our fiducial FABLE model incapable of reproducing the brightest quasars.