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A Dark Matter Origin for Little Red Dots

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illustration of the Milky Way's dark matter halo
Illustration of the dark matter halo surrounding the Milky Way. Could dark matter halos in the early universe be the birthplaces of little red dots? [NASA, ESA, and T. Brown and J. Tumlinson (STScI)]

New research suggests that the mysterious “little red dots” spotted in the early universe could be supermassive black holes birthed in the collapse of dark matter halos.

Another Theory for Little Red Dots

little red dots

JWST images of six very distant galaxies dubbed “little red dots.” [NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Dale Kocevski (Colby College)]

Many theories exist for the origins of little red dots: compact, reddish objects spotted mainly in the first billion years after the Big Bang. The leading theory states that that little red dots are growing black holes encased in dense gas. The black holes at the centers of these little red dots appear to be tens or even hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun, raising questions about how they grew so massive so quickly. One possibility is that they started out quite massive, arising from black holes born from the collapse of massive gas clouds in the early universe.

A recent research article explores that theory, with a twist: that the black holes at the heart of little red dots were born not out of regular, baryonic matter, but out of dark matter.

A Dark (Matter) Past

In the early days of the universe, tiny fluctuations in the density of dark matter began to grow, eventually collapsing into vast spheroidal structures called dark matter halos. In the leading theory of cosmology, ΛCDM, dark matter interacts with itself and normal matter only through gravity. This leads to the creation of stable dark matter halos that act as the invisible scaffolding within which the first stars and galaxies grow.

In today’s article, Fangzhou Jiang (Peking University) and collaborators investigated the evolution of halos containing self-interacting dark matter. Particles of self-interacting dark matter, as the name suggests, can interact with one another through collisions and exchange heat. This small adjustment, sometimes invoked in alternatives to ΛCDM to explain the properties of dwarf galaxies, can lead to the collapse of dark matter halos into black holes.

Seeding Black Holes

Jiang and coauthors examined whether this process could explain the observed population of little red dots. First, the team examined whether the timescales are feasible: is it possible for dark matter to assemble itself into massive halos and collapse into black holes, all within the first billion years of the universe?

The answer appears to be yes — in this framework, dark matter halos with masses between 106.5 and 108.5 solar masses were able to form black holes between 104.5 and 106.5 solar masses by a redshift of z = 8.5, when the universe was just 600 million years old.

plot comparing observed and modeled black hole populations

Comparison of the inferred black hole population in little red dots (red diamonds) to models of black holes formed in dark matter halo collapse (shaded areas) at two redshifts. The red area shows the fiducial model, while the blue and green areas show the effects of changing the dark matter self-interaction cross-section. The dashed red lines show an extreme case in which the presence of baryons accelerates halo collapse. Click to enlarge. [Jiang et al. 2026]

Jiang’s team then performed semianalytic modeling to explore how these “seed” black holes grow and evolve through accretion and mergers. This analysis generated a distribution of black hole masses consistent with what has been observed in little red dots. The team cautioned that their results are sensitive to the interaction cross-section of the dark matter particles, as well as various other parameters like the black hole accretion duty cycle. Their modeling also assumes that the halo collapse takes place before any baryonic matter collects within it. Intriguingly, the authors found that the presence of baryons accelerates the collapse of the dark matter halo, speeding the seeding process.

To close, Jiang and collaborators noted that this process is not mutually exclusive with other black hole seeding mechanisms, and as studies of self-interacting dark matter continue, its ability to create black holes in the early universe should be examined further.

Citation

“Formation of the Little Red Dots from the Core Collapse of Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos,” Fangzhou Jiang et al 2026 ApJL 996 L19. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae247a