Black hole mass threshold from nonsingular quantum gravitational collapse.

Quantum gravity is expected to remove the classical singularity that arises as the end state of gravitational collapse. To investigate this, we work with a toy model of a collapsing homogeneous scalar field. We show that nonperturbative semiclassical effects of loop quantum gravity cause a bounce and remove the black hole singularity. Furthermore, we find a critical threshold scale below which no horizon forms: quantum gravity may exclude very small astrophysical black holes.