activity
20242026
collaborators

10 papers

astro-ph.CO2026

JWST's Little Red Dots as collapsed Supermassive Dark Stars

Cosmin Ilie

The nature of the ``Little Red Dots'' (LRDs) is one of the most profound mysteries posed by the JWST data. One promising class of models that can reproduce the observed LRDs spectr…

astro-ph.GA2026

Supermassive Dark Stars and their remnants as a possible solution to three recent cosmic dawn puzzles

Cosmin Ilie, Jillian Paulin, Andreea Petric +1

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has begun to revolutionize our view of the Cosmos. The discovery of Blue Monsters (i.e., ultra-compact yet very bright high-z galaxies) and th…

astro-ph.CO2025

Early Formation of Supermassive Black Holes via Dark Star Gravitational Instability

Katherine Freese, George M. Fuller, Sohan Ghodla +4

We show that dark stars, which are dark-matter-powered stars in the early universe, can grow by accretion to masses in the range $\mathscr{O}\left ({10}^4\right )-\mathscr{O}\left…

astro-ph.IM2025

Neural Network identification of Dark Star Candidates. II. Spectroscopy

Adiba Amira Siddiqa, Sayed Shafaat Mahmud, Cosmin Ilie

Some of the first stars in the Universe might be powered by Dark Matter (DM) annihilations, rather than nuclear fusion. Those objects, i.e. Dark stars (DS), offer a unique window i…

astro-ph.CO2025

Neural Network identification of Dark Star Candidates. I. Photometry

Sayed Shafaat Mahmud, Adiba Amira Siddiqa, Cosmin Ilie

The formation of the first stars in the universe could be significantly impacted by the effects of Dark Matter (DM). Namely, if DM is in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Part…

astro-ph.CO2025

Constraining Asymmetric DM Properties by Black Hole Formation in Neutron Stars and Population III Stars

Jared Diks, Cosmin Ilie

In this work we explore the potential for Neutron Stars (NSs) at the Galactic center and Population~III stars to constrain bosonic Asymmetric Dark Matter (ADM). We demonstrate that…