JWST Cosmic-Dawn Tensions and a Dark-Star Pathway: Supermassive Dark Stars, Early Black-Hole Seeds, and Testable Spectral Signatures

AbstractJWST has unveiled a range of compact, red, line-broadened sources (“little red dots”) along-side a population of unexpectedly luminous galaxies at z ≳ 10. These observations revivequestions about the formation of early massive black-hole seeds and the rapid assembly of met-als and dust. We explore whether supermassive dark stars (SMDSs)—baryonic objects poweredtemporarily by dark-matter annihilation—offer a unified pathway to form ∼ 105 – 107M⊙ black-hole seeds very early on. This scenario predicts distinctive spectral signatures that can be testedwith current and forthcoming JWST data.