No Arabic abstract
We study the formation of black holes from subhorizon and superhorizon perturbations in a matter dominated universe with 3+1D numerical relativity simulations. We find that there are two primary mechanisms of formation depending on the initial perturbations mass and geometry -- via $textit{direct collapse}$ of the initial overdensity and via $textit{post-collapse accretion}$ of the ambient dark matter. In particular, for the latter case, the initial perturbation does not have to satisfy the hoop conjecture for a black hole to form. In both cases, the duration of the formation the process is around a Hubble time, and the initial mass of the black hole is $M_mathrm{BH} sim 10^{-2} H^{-1} M_mathrm{Pl}^2$. Post formation, we find that the PBH undergoes rapid mass growth beyond the self-similar limit $M_mathrm{BH}propto H^{-1}$, at least initially. We argue that this implies that most of the final mass of the PBH is accreted from its ambient surroundings post formation.
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are those which may have formed in the early Universe and affected the subsequent evolution of the Universe through their Hawking radiation and gravitational field. To constrain the early Universe from the observational constraint on the abundance of PBHs, it is essential to determine the formation threshold for primordial cosmological fluctuations, which are naturally described by cosmological long-wavelength solutions. I will briefly review our recent analytical and numerical results on the PBH formation.
We re-analyse current single-field inflationary models related to primordial black holes formation. We do so by taking into account recent developments on the estimations of their abundances and the influence of non-gaussianities. We show that, for all of them, the gaussian approximation, which is typically used to estimate the primordial black holes abundances, fails. However, in the case in which the inflaton potential has an inflection point, the contribution of non-gaussianities is only perturbative. Finally, we infer that only models featuring an inflection point in the inflationary potential, might predict, with a very good approximation, the desired abundances by the sole use of the gaussian statistics.
Primordial Black Holes (PBH) from peaks in the curvature power spectrum could constitute today an important fraction of the Dark Matter in the Universe. At horizon reentry, during the radiation era, order one fluctuations collapse gravitationally to form black holes and, at the same time, generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves coming from second order anisotropic stresses in matter. We study the amplitude and shape of this background for several phenomenological models of the curvature power spectrum that can be embedded in waterfall hybrid inflation, axion, domain wall, and boosts of PBH formation at the QCD transition. For a broad peak or a nearly scale invariant spectrum, this stochastic background is generically enhanced by about one order of magnitude, compared to a sharp feature. As a result, stellar-mass PBH from Gaussian fluctuations with a wide mass distribution are already in strong tension with the limits from Pulsar Timing Arrays, if they constitute a non negligible fraction of the Dark Matter. But this result is mitigated by the uncertainties on the curvature threshold leading to PBH formation. LISA will have the sensitivity to detect or rule out light PBH down to $10^{-14} M_{odot}$. Upcoming runs of LIGO/Virgo and future interferometers such as the Einstein Telescope will increase the frequency lever arm to constrain PBH from the QCD transition. Ultimately, the future SKA Pulsar Timing Arrays could probe the existence of even a single stellar-mass PBH in our Observable Universe.
Primordial black holes could have been formed in the early universe from non linear cosmological perturbations re-entering the cosmological horizon when the Universe was still radiation dominated. Starting from the shape of the power spectrum on superhorizon scales, we provide a simple prescription, based on the results of numerical simulations, to compute the threshold $delta_c$ for primordial black hole formation. Our procedure takes into account both the non linearities between the Gaussian curvature perturbation and the density contrast and, for the first time in the literature, the non linear effects arising at horizon crossing, which increase the value of the threshold by about a factor two with respect to the one computed on superhorizon scales.
We investigate primordial black hole formation in the matter-dominated phase of the Universe, where nonspherical effects in gravitational collapse play a crucial role. This is in contrast to the black hole formation in a radiation-dominated era. We apply the Zeldovich approximation, Thornes hoop conjecture, and Doroshkevichs probability distribution and subsequently derive the production probability $beta_{0}$ of primordial black holes. The numerical result obtained is applicable even if the density fluctuation $sigma$ at horizon entry is of the order of unity. For $sigmall 1$, we find a semi-analytic formula $beta_{0}simeq 0.05556 sigma^{5}$, which is comparable with the Khlopov-Polnarev formula. We find that the production probability in the matter-dominated era is much larger than that in the radiation-dominated era for $sigmalesssim 0.05$, while they are comparable with each other for $sigmagtrsim 0.05$. We also discuss how $sigma$ can be written in terms of primordial curvature perturbations.