Pebbles to Gems: Intermediate-mass black holes in the first star clusters

arXiv:2607.03536 · astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-07-03 · Read on arXiv

Benedetta Mestichelli, Manuel Arca Sedda, Marta Volonteri, Michela Mapelli, Stefano Torniamenti, Alessandro Lupi, Marica Branchesi, Shingo Hirano, Tomoaki Ishiyama, Ralf S. Klessen, Veronika Lipatova, Boyuan Liu

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-07-03

Comments: 14 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Comments are welcome

Code: https://github.com/bmestichelli/RaccoonBinator

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Core — 8× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Abundance — 6× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• N-body simulations — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Adam — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Clustering — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Gran Sasso Science Institute — 1× in this paper
• Mass Segregation — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Metallicity — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Regularization — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes

Sources

• Beyond Hierarchical Mergers: Accretion-Driven Origins of Massive, Highly Spinning Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters
• Growth of Light Seed Black Holes in the Early Universe
• Teen TITANS simulations -- I. Inefficient intermediate-mass black hole seeding via stellar collisions in young massive clusters
• Supermassive stars with embedded stellar black hole cores: dense assembling star clusters as faint multiple Little Red Dot systems
• FROST-CLUSTERS -- III. Metallicity-dependent intermediate mass black hole formation by runaway collisions in dense star clusters
• Star-Black Hole Interactions in Young Star Clusters
• The In Situ Growth of Stellar-mass "Light" Seed Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• Intermediate-mass black hole seeding in galactic nuclei from star cluster migration
• Direct N-body simulations of rotating and extremely massive Population III star clusters

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