James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: Black Holes and Baryon Number Violation: Unveiling the Origins of Early Galaxies and the Low-Mass Gap

Paper abstract: We propose that modifications to the Higgs potential within a narrow atmospheric layer near the event horizon of an astrophysical black hole could significantly enhance the rate of sphaleron transitions, as well as transform the Chern-Simons number into a dynamic variable. As a result, sphaleron transitions in this region occur without suppression, in contrast to low-temperature conditions, and each transition may generate a substantially greater baryon number than would be produced by winding around the Higgs potential in Minkowski spacetime. This effect amplifies baryon number violation near the black hole horizon, potentially leading to a considerable generation of matter. Given the possibility of a departure from equilibrium during the absorption of matter and the formation of relativistic jets in supermassive black holes, we conjecture that this process could contribute to the creation of a significant amount of matter around such black holes. This phenomenon may offer an alternative explanation for the rapid growth of supermassive black holes and their surrounding galaxies in the early Universe, as suggested by recent observations from the JWST. Furthermore, this mechanism may provide insights into the low-mass gap puzzle, addressing the observed scarcity of black holes with masses near the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit.