Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userGravitational microlensing constraints on primordial black holes by Euclid
116
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Primordial black holes (PBHs) may form in the early stages of the Universe via the collapse of large density perturbations. Depending on the formation mechanism, PBHs may exist and populate today the galactic halos and have masses in a wide range, from about 10^{-14}Msun up to thousands, or more, of solar masses. Gravitational microlensing is the most robust and powerful method to constrain primordial black holes (PBHs), since it does not require that the lensing objects be directly visible. We calculate the optical depth and the rate of microlensing events caused by PBHs eventually distributed in the Milky Way halo, towards some selected directions of observation. Then we discuss the capability of Euclid, a space-based telescope which might perform microlensing observations at the end of its nominal mission, to probe the PBH populations in the Galactic halo.
rate research
Read More
It has recently been proposed that massive primordial black holes (PBH) could constitute all of the dark matter, providing a novel scenario of structure formation, with early reionization and a rapid growth of the massive black holes at the center of galaxies and dark matter halos. The scenario arises from broad peaks in the primordial power spectrum that give both a spatially clustered and an extended mass distribution of PBH. The constraints from the observed microlensing events on the extended mass function have already been addressed. Here we study the impact of spatial clustering on the microlensing constraints. We find that the bounds can be relaxed significantly for relatively broad mass distributions if the number of primordial black holes within each cluster is typically above one hundred. On the other hand, even if they arise from individual black holes within the cluster, the bounds from CMB anisotropies are less stringent due to the enhanced black hole velocity in such dense clusters. This way, the window between a few and ten solar masses has opened up for PBH to comprise the totality of the dark matter.
Primordial black holes (PBHs) have been proposed to explain at least a portion of dark matter. Observations have put strong constraints on PBHs in terms of the fraction of dark matter which they can represent, $f_{rm PBH}$, across a wide mass range -- apart from the stellar-mass range of $20M_odotlesssim M_{rm PBH}lesssim 100M_odot$. In this paper, we explore the possibility that such PBHs could serve as point-mass lenses capable of altering the gravitational-wave (GW) signals observed from binary black hole (BBH) mergers along their line-of-sight. We find that careful GW data analysis could verify the existence of such PBHs based on the $fitting~factor$ and odds ratio analyses. When such a lensed GW signal is detected, we expect to be able to measure the redshifted mass of the lens with a relative error $Delta M_{rm PBH}/M_{rm PBH}lesssim0.3$. If no such lensed GW events were detected despite the operation of sensitive GW detectors accumulating large numbers of BBH mergers, it would translate into a stringent constraint of $f_{rm PBH}lesssim 10^{-2}-10^{-5}$ for PBHs with a mass larger than $sim10M_odot$ by the Einstein Telescope after one year of running, and $f_{rm PBH}lesssim 0.2$ for PBHs with mass greater than $sim 50M_odot$ for advanced LIGO after ten years of running.
We update the constraints on the fraction of the Universe that may have gone into primordial black holes (PBHs) over the mass range $10^{-5}text{--}10^{50}$ g. Those smaller than $sim 10^{15}$ g would have evaporated by now due to Hawking radiation, so their abundance at formation is constrained by the effects of evaporated particles on big bang nucleosynthesis, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the Galactic and extragalactic $gamma$-ray and cosmic ray backgrounds and the possible generation of stable Planck mass relics. PBHs larger than $sim 10^{15}$ g are subject to a variety of constraints associated with gravitational lensing, dynamical effects, influence on large-scale structure, accretion and gravitational waves. We discuss the constraints on both the initial collapse fraction and the current fraction of the CDM in PBHs at each mass scale but stress that many of the constraints are associated with observational or theoretical uncertainties. We also consider indirect constraints associated with the amplitude of the primordial density fluctuations, such as second-order tensor perturbations and $mu$-distortions arising from the effect of acoustic reheating on the CMB, if PBHs are created from the high-$sigma$ peaks of nearly Gaussian fluctuations. Finally we discuss how the constraints are modified if the PBHs have an extended mass function, this being relevant if PBHs provide some combination of the dark matter, the LIGO/Virgo coalescences and the seeds for cosmic structure. Even if PBHs make a small contribution to the dark matter, they could play an important cosmological role and provide a unique probe of the early Universe.
Primordial black holes (PBHs), hypothesized to be the result of density fluctuations during the early universe, are candidates for dark matter. When microlensing background stars, they cause a transient apparent enhancement of the flux. Measuring these signals with optical telescopes is a powerful method to constrain the PBH abundance in the range of $10^{-10},M_{odot}$ to $10^{1},M_{odot}$. Especially for galactic stars, the finiteness of the sources needs to be taken into account. For low PBH masses (in this work $lesssim 10^{-8},M_{odot}$) the average duration of the detectable event decreases with the mass $langle t_erangle propto M_{mathrm{PBH}}$. For $M_{mathrm{PBH}}approx 10^{-11},M_{odot}$ we find $langle t_erangle lesssim,1 mathrm{s}$. For this reason, fast sampling detectors may be required as they could enable the detection of low mass PBHs. Current limits are set with sampling speeds of 2 minutes to 24 hours in the optical regime. Ground-based Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) are optimized to detect the $sim$ns long optical Cherenkov signals induced by atmospheric air showers. As shown recently, the very-large mirror area of these instruments provides very high signal to noise ratio for fast optical transients ($ll 1,$s) such as asteroid occultations. We investigate whether optical observations by IACTs can contribute to extending microlensing limits to the unconstrained mass range $M_{mathrm{PBH}}<10^{-10}M_odot$. We discuss the limiting factors to perform these searches for each telescope type. We calculate the rate of expected detectable microlensing events in the relevant mass range for the current and next-generation IACTs considering realistic source parameters.
Primordial black holes (PBHs) have long been suggested as a viable candidate for the elusive dark matter (DM). The abundance of such PBHs has been constrained using a number of astrophysical observations, except for a hitherto unexplored mass window of $M_{rm PBH}=[10^{-14},10^{-9}]M_odot$. Here we carry out a dense-cadence (2~min sampling rate), 7 hour-long observation of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam to search for microlensing of stars in M31 by PBHs lying in the halo regions of the Milky Way (MW) and M31. Given our simultaneous monitoring of tens of millions of stars in M31, if such light PBHs make up a significant fraction of DM, we expect to find many microlensing events for the PBH DM scenario. However, we identify only a single candidate event, which translates into the most stringent upper bounds on the abundance of PBHs in the mass range $M_{rm PBH}simeq [10^{-11}, 10^{-6}]M_odot$.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
