Supermassive Dark Stars: Detectable by JWST and HST

The first stars in the universe may have been powered by dark matter annihilation rather than by fusion. This novel kind of stellar evolution may have lasted millions or billions of years. Such “dark stars” can grow to be very massive, $>105M⊙,$ and are relatively cool $(∼104 K).$ They are also very bright and may be detectable by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope or even by the Hubble Space Telescope. Once their dark matter fuel is expended, dark stars have a short fusion phase before collapsing into black holes (BH). These BH could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found at the centers of massive galaxies at high redshift.