The spin of the very first black holes was probably decided by tiny quantum jitters during the first seconds of the Big Bang.
arXiv · March 17, 2026 · 2603.14814
The Takeaway
Instead of getting their rotation from collapsing stars, these ancient black holes may have inherited 'internal' angular momentum stored in quantum fields when the universe was less than a second old. This discovery links the rotation of the cosmos's most massive objects directly to the smallest possible subatomic fluctuations.
From the abstract
The origin of cosmic angular momentum is a fundamental question in structure formation. We propose a novel mechanism that generates spatial angular momentum directly from quantum fluctuations during inflation. A spectator complex scalar field with global U(1) symmetry stores internal angular momentum via field-space rotation. Inflationary perturbations create spatial gradients that, upon horizon re-entry, couple to the background charge density and source a bulk momentum flow. During nonspherica