Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST

Abstract

The first generation of stars in the universe is yet to be observed. There are two leading theories for those objects that mark the beginning of the cosmic dawn: hydrogen burning Population III stars and Dark Stars, made of hydrogen and helium but powered by dark matter heating. The latter can grow to become supermassive ( M ⋆ ∼ 10 6 M ⊙ ) and extremely bright ( L ∼ 10 9 L ⊙ ). We show that each of the following three objects—JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0 (at redshifts z ∈ [11, 14])—are consistent with a Supermassive Dark Star interpretation, thus identifying the first Dark Star candidates.

Topics & Concepts