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Black Hole Formation in the First Stellar Clusters

The early Universe was composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only trace amounts of heavy elements. It was only after the first generation of star formation that the Universe became sufficiently polluted to produce a second generation (Population II) of stars which are similar to those in our local Universe. Evidence of massive star cluster formation is nearly ubiquitous among the observed galaxy population and if this mode of star formation occurred at early enough epochs, the higher densities in the early Universe may have caused many of the stars in the cluster to strongly interact. In this scenario, it may be possible to form a very massive star by repeated stellar collisions that may directly collapse into a black hole and form a supermassive black hole seed. In this chapter, we will explore this scenario in detail to understand the dynamics which allow for this process to ensue and measure the probability for this type of seed to represent the supermassive black hole population observed at z > 6.