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Not-Quite-Primordial Black Holes

Wenzer Qin1, Soubhik Kumar2,1, Priyamvada Natarajan3,4,5,6, and Neal Weiner1,7,8

  • 1Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA
  • 2Institute of Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA
  • 3Department of Astronomy, Yale University, 219 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA
  • 5Yale Center for the Invisible Universe, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
  • 6Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 7Center for Computational Astrophysics, 160 5th Avenue, New York, New York 10010, USA
  • 8Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 111004 – Published 9 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zfjm-8fnt

Abstract

We propose a new mechanism for the formation of seeds of supermassive black holes at early cosmic epochs. Our scenario explores density fluctuations that are enhanced relative to ΛCDM expectations, but with amplitudes that are not large enough to form primordial black holes, and that can still lead to collapsed dark matter halos at very early times. For halos forming prior to 1+z≈200, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is energetic enough to suppress the formation of molecular hydrogen, hence preventing cooling and fragmentation, as a consequence of which baryons falling into the potential well of the halo may undergo “direct collapse” into a black hole. We show, using a few illustrative models, how this mechanism may account for the abundance of high-redshift black holes inferred from observations by the James Webb Space Telescope while remaining consistent with limits from CMB spectral distortions. Limits on the primordial power spectrum are also derived by requiring that the universe not reionize too early.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 111004– Published 9 September, 2026
  • Received 3 July 2025
  • Revised 27 October 2025
  • Accepted 23 July 2026
Article part of CHORUS
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