scholarly journals Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 355-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Carr ◽  
Florian Kühnel

Although the dark matter is usually assumed to be made up of some form of elementary particle, primordial black holes (PBHs) could also provide some of it. However, various constraints restrict the possible mass windows to 1016–1017 g, 1020–1024 g, and 10–103 M⊙. 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 account for only a small fraction of the dark matter density. In particular, those larger than 103 M⊙ 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 1012 M⊙ could provide an interesting dark component.

Author(s):  
Juan García-Bellido

We review here a new scenario of hot spot electroweak baryogenesis where the local energy released in the gravitational collapse to form primordial black holes (PBHs) at the quark-hadron (QCD) epoch drives over-the-barrier sphaleron transitions in a far from equilibrium environment with just the standard model CP violation. Baryons are efficiently produced in relativistic collisions around the black holes and soon redistribute to the rest of the universe, generating the observed matter–antimatter asymmetry well before primordial nucleosynthesis. Therefore, in this scenario there is a common origin of both the dark matter to baryon ratio and the photon to baryon ratio. Moreover, the sudden drop in radiation pressure of relativistic matter at H 0 / W ± / Z 0 decoupling, the QCD transition and e + e − annihilation enhances the probability of PBH formation, inducing a multi-modal broad mass distribution with characteristic peaks at 10 −6 , 1, 30 and 10 6   M ⊙ , rapidly falling at smaller and larger masses, which may explain the LIGO–Virgo black hole mergers as well as the OGLE-GAIA microlensing events, while constituting all of the cold dark matter today. We predict the future detection of binary black hole (BBH) mergers in LIGO with masses between 1 and 5  M ⊙ , as well as above 80  M ⊙ , with very large mass ratios. Next generation gravitational wave and microlensing experiments will be able to test this scenario thoroughly. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Topological avatars of new physics’.


2015 ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Smole

We follow trajectories of kicked black holes in static and evolving dark matter halo potential. We explore both NFW and Einasto dark matter density distributions. Considered dark matter halos represent hosts of massive spiral and elliptical field galaxies. We study critical amplitude of kick velocity necessary for complete black hole ejection at various redshifts and find that ~40% lower kick velocities can remove black holes from their host haloes at z = 7 compared to z = 1. The greatest difference between static and evolving potential occurs near the critical velocity for black hole ejection and at high redshifts. When NFW and Einasto density distributions are compared ~30% higher kick velocities are needed for complete removal of BHs from dark matter halo described by NFW profile.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (11) ◽  
pp. 059
Author(s):  
Z. Stuchlík ◽  
J. Vrba

Abstract Recently introduced exact solution of the Einstein gravity coupled minimally to an anisotropic fluid representing dark matter can well represent supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei with realistic distribution of dark matter around the black hole, given by the Hernquist-like density distribution. For these fluid-hairy black hole spacetimes, properties of the gravitational radiation, quasinormal ringing, and optical phenomena were studied, giving interesting results. Here, using the range of physical parameters of these spacetimes allowing for their relevance in astrophysics, we study the epicyclic oscillatory motion of test particles in these spacetimes. The frequencies of the orbital and epicyclic motion are applied in the epicyclic resonance variant of the geodesic model of quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) observed in active galactic nuclei to demonstrate the possibility to solve the cases where the standard vacuum black hole spacetimes are not allowing for explanation of the observed data. We demonstrate that the geodesic model can explain the QPOs observed in most of the active galactic nuclei for the fluid-hairy black holes with reasonable halo parameters.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (13) ◽  
pp. 1545005 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Belotsky ◽  
A. A. Kirillov ◽  
S. G. Rubin

Here, we briefly discuss the possibility to solve simultaneously with primordial black holes (PBHs) the problems of dark matter (DM), reionization of the universe, origin of positron line from Galactic center and supermassive black hole (BH) in it. Discussed scenario can naturally lead to a multiple-peak broad-mass-range distribution of PBHs in mass, which is necessary for simultaneous solution of the problems.


2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (07) ◽  
pp. 1243-1248 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. B. KHRIPLOVICH ◽  
N. PRODUIT

If primordial black holes (PBH) saturate the present upper limit on the dark matter density in our Solar system and if their radiation spectrum is discrete, the sensitivity of modern detectors is close to that necessary for detecting this radiation. This conclusion is not in conflict with the upper limits on the PBH evaporation rate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (4) ◽  
pp. 4497-4503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Desjacques ◽  
Adi Nusser

ABSTRACT If the dark matter is made of ultralight axions, stable solitonic cores form at the centres of virialized haloes. In some range for the mass m of the axion particle, these cores are sufficiently compact and can mimic supermassive black holes (SMBH) residing at galactic nuclei. We use the solitonic core–halo mass relation, validated in numerical simulations, to constrain a new range of allowed axion mass from measurements of the SMBH mass in (pseudo)bulge and bulgeless galaxies. These limits are based on observations of galactic nuclei on scales smaller than 10 pc. Our analysis suggests that $m\lesssim 10^{-18}\, {\rm eV}$ is ruled out by the data. We briefly discuss whether an attractive self-interaction among axions could alleviate this constraint.


2020 ◽  
Vol 496 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
J L G Sobrinho ◽  
P Augusto

ABSTRACT Primordial black holes (PBHs) might have formed in the early Universe due to the collapse of density fluctuations. PBHs may act as the sources for some of the gravitational waves recently observed. We explored the formation scenarios of PBHs of stellar mass, taking into account the possible influence of the QCD phase transition, for which we considered three different models: crossover model, bag model, and lattice fit model. For the fluctuations, we considered a running-tilt power-law spectrum; when these cross the ∼10−9–10−1 s Universe horizon they originate 0.05–500 M⊙ PBHs that could (i) provide a population of stellar mass PBHs similar to the ones present on the binaries associated with all-known gravitational wave sources and (ii) constitute a broad-mass spectrum accounting for ${\sim}76{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of all cold dark matter in the Universe.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anirudh Gundhi ◽  
Christian F. Steinwachs

AbstractWe propose an extension of the scalaron-Higgs model by a non-minimal coupling of the Standard Model Higgs boson to the quadratic Ricci scalar resulting in a Higgs-dependent scalaron mass. The model predicts a successful stage of effective single-field Starobinsky inflation. It features a multi-field amplification mechanism leading to a peak in the inflationary power spectrum at small wavelengths which enhances the production of primordial black holes. The extended scalaron-Higgs model unifies inflationary cosmology with elementary particle physics and explains the origin of cold dark matter in terms of primordial black holes without assuming any new particles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 492 (4) ◽  
pp. 5218-5225
Author(s):  
Pierre Boldrini ◽  
Yohei Miki ◽  
Alexander Y Wagner ◽  
Roya Mohayaee ◽  
Joseph Silk ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We performed a series of high-resolution N-body simulations to examine whether dark matter candidates in the form of primordial black holes (PBHs) can solve the cusp–core problem in low-mass dwarf galaxies. If some fraction of the dark matter in low-mass dwarf galaxies consists of PBHs and the rest is cold dark matter, dynamical heating of the cold dark matter by the PBHs induces a cusp-to-core transition in the total dark matter profile. The mechanism works for PBHs in the 25–100 M⊙ mass window, consistent with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detections, but requires a lower limit on the PBH mass fraction of 1 ${{\rm per\ cent}}$ of the total dwarf galaxy dark matter content. The cusp-to-core transition time-scale is between 1 and 8 Gyr. This time-scale is also a constant multiple of the relaxation time between cold dark matter particles and PBHs, which depends on the mass, the mass fraction, and the scale radius of the initial density profile of PBHs. We conclude that dark matter cores occur naturally in haloes composed of cold dark matter and PBHs, without the need to invoke baryonic processes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (11) ◽  
pp. 039
Author(s):  
Valerio De Luca ◽  
Gabriele Franciolini ◽  
Paolo Pani ◽  
Antonio Riotto

Abstract The next generation of gravitational-wave experiments, such as Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer and LISA, will test the primordial black hole scenario. We provide a forecast for the minimum testable value of the abundance of primordial black holes as a function of their masses for both the unclustered and clustered spatial distributions at formation. In particular, we show that these instruments may test abundances, relative to the dark matter, as low as 10-10.


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