No Arabic abstract
We investigate the formation and growth of massive black hole (BH) seeds in dusty star-forming galaxies, relying and extending the framework proposed by Boco et al. 2020. Specifically, the latter envisages the migration of stellar compact remnants (neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes) via gaseous dynamical friction towards the galaxy nuclear region, and their subsequent merging to grow a massive central BH seed. In this paper we add two relevant ingredients: (i) we include primordial BHs, that could constitute a fraction $f_{rm pBH}$ of the dark matter, as an additional component participating in the seed growth; (ii) we predict the stochastic gravitational wave background originated during the seed growth, both from stellar compact remnant and from primordial BH mergers. We find that the latter events contribute most to the initial growth of the central seed during a timescale of $10^6-10^7,rm yr$, before stellar compact remnant mergers and gas accretion take over. In addition, if the fraction of primordial BHs $f_{rm pBH}$ is large enough, gravitational waves emitted by their mergers in the nuclear galactic regions could be detected by future interferometers like Einsten Telescope, DECIGO and LISA. As for the associated stochastic gravitational wave background, we predict that it extends over the wide frequency band $10^{-6}lesssim f [{rm Hz}]lesssim 10$, which is very different from the typical range originated by mergers of isolated binary compact objects. On the one hand, the detection of such a background could be a smoking gun to test the proposed seed growth mechanism; on the other hand, it constitutes a relevant contaminant from astrophysical sources to be characterized and subtracted, in the challenging search for a primordial background of cosmological origin.
The black hole merging rates inferred after the gravitational-wave detection by Advanced LIGO/VIRGO and the relatively high mass of the progenitors are consistent with models of dark matter made of massive primordial black holes (PBH). PBH binaries emit gravitational waves in a broad range of frequencies that will be probed by future space interferometers (LISA) and pulsar timing arrays (PTA). The amplitude of the stochastic gravitational-wave background expected for PBH dark matter is calculated taking into account various effects such as initial eccentricity of binaries, PBH velocities, mass distribution and clustering. It allows a detection by the LISA space interferometer, and possibly by the PTA of the SKA radio-telescope. Interestingly, one can distinguish this background from the one of non-primordial massive binaries through a specific frequency dependence, resulting from the maximal impact parameter of binaries formed by PBH capture, depending on the PBH velocity distribution and their clustering properties. Moreover, we find that the gravitational wave spectrum is boosted by the width of PBH mass distribution, compared with that of the monochromatic spectrum. The current PTA constraints already rule out broad-mass PBH models covering more than three decades of masses, but evading the microlensing and CMB constraints due to clustering.
Gravitational waves from binary black holes that are gravitationally lensed can be distorted by small microlenses along the line of sight. Microlenses with masses of a few tens of solar masses, and that are close to a critical curve in the lens plane, can introduce a time delay of a few millisecond. Such time delay would result in distinctive interference patterns in the gravitational wave that can be measured with current experiments such as LIGO/Virgo. We consider the particular case of primordial black holes with masses between 5 and 50 solar masses acting as microlenses. We study the effect of a population of primordial black holes constituting a fraction of the dark matter, and contained in a macrolens (galaxy or cluster), over gravitational waves that are being lensed by the combined effect of the macrolens plus microlenses. We find that at the typical magnifications expected for observed GW events, the fraction of dark matter in the form of compact microlenses, such as primordial black holes, can be constrained to percent level. Similarly, if a small percentage of the dark matter is in the form of microlenses with a few tens of solar masses, at sufficiently large magnification factors, all gravitational waves will show interference effects. These effects could have an impact on the inferred parameters. The effect is more important for macroimages with negative parity, which usually arrive after the macroimages with positive parity.
The formation of merging binary black holes can occur through multiple astrophysical channels such as, e.g., isolated binary evolution and dynamical formation or, alternatively, have a primordial origin. Increasingly large gravitational-wave catalogs of binary black-hole mergers have allowed for the first model selection studies between different theoretical predictions to constrain some of their model uncertainties and branching ratios. In this work, we show how one could add an additional and independent constraint to model selection by using the stochastic gravitational-wave background. In contrast to model selection analyses that have discriminating power only up to the gravitational-wave detector horizons (currently at redshifts $zlesssim 1$ for LIGO-Virgo), the stochastic gravitational-wave background accounts for the redshift integration of all gravitational-wave signals in the Universe. As a working example, we consider the branching ratio results from a model selection study that includes potential contribution from astrophysical and primordial channels. We renormalize the relative contribution of each channel to the detected event rate to compute the total stochastic gravitational-wave background energy density. The predicted amplitude lies below the current observational upper limits of GWTC-2 by LIGO-Virgo, indicating that the results of the model selection analysis are not ruled out by current background limits. Furthermore, given the set of population models and inferred branching ratios, we find that, even though the predicted background will not be detectable by current generation gravitational-wave detectors, it will be accessible by third-generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope and space-based detectors such as LISA.
We study the prospects of future gravitational wave (GW) detectors in probing primordial black hole (PBH) binaries. We show that across a broad mass range from $10^{-5}M_odot$ to $10^7M_odot$, future GW interferometers provide a potential probe of the PBH abundance that is more sensitive than any currently existing experiment. In particular, we find that galactic PBH binaries with masses as low as $10^{-5}M_odot$ may be probed with ET, AEDGE and LISA by searching for nearly monochromatic continuous GW signals. Such searches could independently test the PBH interpretation of the ultrashort microlensing events observed by OGLE. We also consider the possibility of observing GWs from asteroid mass PBH binaries through graviton-photon conversion.
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are dark matter candidates that span broad mass ranges from $10^{-17}$ $M_odot$ to $sim 100$ $M_odot$. We show that the stochastic gravitational wave background can be a powerful window for the detection of sub-solar mass PBHs and shed light on their formation channel via third-generation gravitational wave detectors such as Cosmic Explorer and the Einstein Telescope. By using the mass distribution of the compact objects and the redshift evolution of the merger rates, we can distinguish astrophysical sources from PBHs and will be able to constrain the fraction of sub-solar mass PBHs $leq 1$ $M_odot$ in the form of dark matter $f_{PBH}leq 1%$ at $68%$ C.L. even for a pessimistic value of the suppression factor ($f_{sup} sim 10^{-3}$). For $f_{sup} sim 1$, the constraints on $f_{PBH}$ will be less than $0.001%$. Furthermore, we will be able to measure the redshift evolution of the PBH merger rate with about $1%$ accuracy, making it possible to uniquely distinguish between the Poisson and clustered PBH scenarios.