No Arabic abstract
We study the dynamics of a spectator Higgs field which stochastically evolves during inflation onto near-critical trajectories on the edge of a runaway instability. We show that its fluctuations do not produce primordial black holes (PBHs) in sufficient abundance to be the dark matter, nor do they produce significant second-order gravitational waves. First we show that the Higgs produces larger fluctuations on CMB scales than on PBH scales, itself a no-go for a viable PBH scenario. Then we track the superhorizon perturbations nonlinearly through reheating using the delta N formalism to show that they are not converted to large curvature fluctuations. Our conclusions hold regardless of any fine-tuning of the Higgs field for both the Standard Model Higgs and for Higgs potentials modified to prevent unbounded runaway.
The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently published a strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process that may be interpreted as a stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a signal can be explained by second-order gravitational waves produced during the formation of primordial black holes from the collapse of sizeable scalar perturbations generated during inflation. This possibility has two predictions: $i$) the primordial black holes may comprise the totality of the dark matter with the dominant contribution to their mass function falling in the range $(10^{-15}div 10^{-11}) M_odot$ and $ii$) the gravitational wave stochastic background will be seen as well by the LISA experiment.
Although the dark matter is usually assumed to be some form of elementary particle, primordial black holes (PBHs) could also provide some of it. However, various constraints restrict the possible mass windows to $10^{16}$ - $10^{17},$g, $10^{20}$ - $10^{24},$g and $10$ - $10^{3},M_{odot}$. The last possibility is contentious but of special interest in view of the recent detection of black-hole mergers by LIGO/Virgo. PBHs might have important consequences and resolve various cosmological conundra even if they have only a small fraction of the dark-matter density. In particular, those larger than $10^{3},M_{odot}$ could generate cosmological structures through the seed or Poisson effect, thereby alleviating some problems associated with the standard cold dark-matter scenario, and sufficiently large PBHs might provide seeds for the supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. More exotically, the Planck-mass relics of PBH evaporations or stupendously large black holes bigger than $10^{12},M_{odot}$ could provide an interesting dark component.
The renewed interest in the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) may constitute a significant part of the dark matter has motivated revisiting old observational constraints, as well as developing new ones. We present new limits on the PBH abundance, from a comprehensive analysis of high-resolution, high-redshift Lyman-$alpha$ forest data. Poisson fluctuations in the PBH number density induce a small-scale power enhancement which departs from the standard cold dark matter prediction. Using a grid of hydrodynamic simulations exploring different values of astrophysical parameters, {we obtain a marginalized upper limit on the PBH mass of $f_{rm PBH}M_{rm PBH} sim 60~M_{odot}$ at $2sigma$, when a Gaussian prior on the reionization redshift is imposed, preventing its posterior distribution to peak on very high values, which are disfavoured by the most recent estimates obtained both through Cosmic Microwave Background and Inter-Galactic Medium observations. Such bound weakens to $f_{rm PBH}M_{rm PBH} sim 170~M_{odot}$, when a conservative flat prior is instead assumed. Both limits significantly improves previous constraints from the same physical observable.} We also extend our predictions to non-monochromatic PBH mass distributions, ruling out large regions of the parameter space for some of the most viable PBH extended mass functions.
In this paper we present a new scenario where massive Primordial Black Holes (PBH) are produced from the collapse of large curvature perturbations generated during a mild waterfall phase of hybrid inflation. We determine the values of the inflaton potential parameters leading to a PBH mass spectrum peaking on planetary-like masses at matter-radiation equality and producing abundances comparable to those of Dark Matter today, while the matter power spectrum on scales probed by CMB anisotropies agrees with Planck data. These PBH could have acquired large stellar masses today, via merging, and the model passes both the constraints from CMB distortions and micro-lensing. This scenario is supported by Chandra observations of numerous BH candidates in the central region of Andromeda. Moreover, the tail of the PBH mass distribution could be responsible for the seeds of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, as well as for ultra-luminous X-rays sources. We find that our effective hybrid potential can originate e.g. from D-term inflation with a Fayet-Iliopoulos term of the order of the Planck scale but sub-planckian values of the inflaton field. Finally, we discuss the implications of quantum diffusion at the instability point of the potential, able to generate a swiss-cheese like structure of the Universe, eventually leading to apparent accelerated cosmic expansion.
We examine the extent to which primordial black holes (PBHs) can constitute the observed dark matter while also giving rise to the measured matter-antimatter asymmetry and account for the observed baryon abundance through asymmetric Hawking radiation generated by a derivative coupling of curvature to the baryon-lepton current. We consider both broad and monochromatic mass spectra for this purpose. For the monochromatic spectrum we find that the correct dark matter and baryon energy densities are recovered for peak masses of the spectrum of $M_{rm pk} geq 10^{12}$ kg whereas for the broad case the observed energy densities can be reproduced regardless of peak mass. Adopting some simplifications for the early-time expansion history as a first approximation, we also find that the measured baryon asymmetry can be recovered within an order of magnitude. We argue furthermore that the correct value of the baryon-lepton yield can in principle be retrieved for scenarios where a significant amount of the radiation is produced by PBH decay during or after reheating, as is expected when the decaying PBHs also cause reheating, or when an early matter-dominated phase is considered. We conclude from this first analysis that the model merits further investigation.