Direct collapse black hole

Direct collapse black holes (DCBHs) are high-mass black hole seeds (black holes that will later accrete to form supermassive black holes) that form from the direct collapse of a large amount of material. They putatively formed within the redshift range z=15–30, when the Universe was about 100–250 million years old. This was around the same time that stars were being formed, meaning that these black holes could not have formed from stellar collapse. Unlike seeds formed from the first population of stars (also known as Population III stars), direct collapse black hole seeds are formed by a direct, general relativistic instability. They are very massive, with a typical mass at formation of ~105 M☉. This category of black hole seeds was originally proposed theoretically to alleviate the challenge in building supermassive black holes already at redshift z~7, as numerous observations to date have confirmed.

A possible DCBH has been detected in the Infinity Galaxy in 2025 by Pieter Van Dokkum of Yale University and his research team.

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