The Role of Population III Star Tidal Disruption Events in Black Hole Growth at the Cosmic Dawn

Abstract The discovery of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at high redshifts has intensified efforts to understand their early formation and rapid growth during the cosmic dawn. Using a semi-analytical cosmological framework, we investigate the role of tidal disruption events (TDEs) involving Population III (Pop III) stars in driving the growth of heavy-seed black holes (10 4 −10 6 M ⊙ ). Our results indicate that Pop III TDEs significantly accelerate the growth of relatively lighter massive black holes (∼10 4 −10 5 M ⊙ ), allowing them to increase their mass by roughly an order of magnitude within the first 10 Myr. Cosmological evolution modeling further supports such Pop-III-TDE-driven growth scenarios being consistent with the formation pathways of observed luminous high-redshift quasars originating from seed black holes at 10 < z < 15. We also discuss future observational probes of these early-stage growth processes that future facilities, including space-based gravitational-wave observatories and infrared telescopes like JWST, could potentially conduct. These findings provide a clear observational framework to test the critical role of Pop III star interactions in the rapid buildup of SMBHs during the earliest epochs.