Seeding supermassive black holes with a nonvortical dark-matter subcomponent

A perfect irrotational fluid with the equation of state of dust, irrotational dark matter (IDM), is incapable of virializing and instead forms a cosmoskeleton of filaments with supermassive black holes at the joints. This stark difference from the standard cold dark matter scenario arises because IDM must exhibit potential flow at all times, preventing shell crossing from occurring. This scenario is applicable to general nonoscillating scalar-field theories with a small sound speed. Our model of combined IDM and cold dark matter components thereby provides a solution to the problem of forming the observed billionsolar-mass black holes at redshifts of six and higher. In particular, as a result of the reduced vortical flow, the growth of the black holes is expected to be more rapid at later times as compared to the standard scenario.