Formation of black hole stars via star--black hole collisions

Abstract

In dense stellar environments such as globular clusters and active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks, stellar-mass black holes (sBHs) may frequently collide with massive stars. We investigate this process using semi-analytic models, three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations, and one-dimensional stellar evolution calculations, focusing on collisions between sBHs and a $100M_{\odot }$ main-sequence star. We find that gas drag retains the BH within the stellar envelope unless the impact velocity exceeds $\sim 2\sqrt{G(M_{\star }+M_{\bullet })/R_{\star }}$. The post-collision outcome depends primarily on the BH-to-star mass ratio. For $M_{\bullet }\gtrsim 30M_{\odot }$, the retained envelope is either quasi-spherical or disc-like, but remains dynamically unstable because of shock heating. In contrast, for $M_{\bullet }\lesssim 10M_{\odot }$, the collision forms a ``black hole star'' (BH*): a quasi-hydrostatic, extended stellar envelope surrounding the embedded BH. These results agree with our analytic prediction that BH* formation necessarily requires $M_{\bullet }\lesssim 0.2M_{\star }$. Follow-up \texttt{MESA} calculations further show that, for these low-mass BHs, the shock-heated remnant thermally relaxes without triggering runaway expansion. We discuss several astrophysical implications of BH*s, including their evolution, the possibility of gravitational-wave events from BH binaries assembled within a stellar envelope, and repeated star--sBH collisions as a pathway for rapid BH growth in dense stellar systems. This mechanism may contribute to the formation of massive BHs in high-redshift nuclear star clusters and may be relevant to the origin of the ``little red dots'' discovered by JWST.

13 pages, 7 figures