The Formation of Supermassive Black Holes and the Evolution of Supermassive Stars

The existence of supermassive black holes is supported by a growing body of observations. Supermassive black holes and their formation events are likely candidates for detection by proposed long-wavelength, space-based gravitational wave interferometers like LISA. However, the nature of the progenitors of supermassive black holes is rather uncertain. Supermassive black hole formation scenarios that involve either the stellar dynamical evolution of dense clusters or the hydrodynamical evolution of supermassive stars have been proposed. Each of these formation scenarios is reviewed and the evolution of supermassive stars is then examined in some detail. Supermassive stars that rotate uniformly during their secular cooling phase will spin up to the mass-shedding limit and eventually contract to the point of relativistic collapse. Supermassive stars that rotate differentially as they cool will likely encounter the dynamical bar mode instability prior to the onset of relativistic collapse. A supermassive star that undergoes this bar distortion, prior to or during collapse, may be a strong source of quasiperiodic, long-wavelength gravitational radiation.