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Primordial black hole formation during the QCD phase transition: threshold, mass distribution and abundance

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arxiv 2303.07980 v2 pith:DTYNMJXV submitted 2023-03-14 astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-ph

Primordial black hole formation during the QCD phase transition: threshold, mass distribution and abundance

classification astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-ph
keywords formationduringmassannihilationepochblackholetransition
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Primordial black hole (PBH) formation during cosmic phase transitions and annihilation periods, such as the QCD transition or the $e^+e^-$-annihilation, is thought to be particularly efficient due to a softening of the equation of state. We present a detailed numerical study of PBH formation during the QCD epoch in order to derive an accurate PBH mass function. We also briefly consider PBH formation during the $e^+e^-$-annihilation epoch. Our investigation confirms that, for nearly scale-invariant spectra, PBH abundances on the QCD scale are enhanced by a factor $\sim 10^3$ compared to a purely radiation dominated Universe. For a power spectrum producing an (almost) scale-invariant PBH mass function outside of the transition, we find a peak mass of $M_{\rm pbh}\approx 1.9 M_{\odot}$ with a fraction $f\approx 1.5\times 10^{-2}$ of the PBHs having a mass of $M_{\rm pbh} > 10 M_{\odot}$, possibly contributing to the LIGO-Virgo black hole merger detections. We point out that the physics of PBH formation during the $e^+e^-$-annihilation epoch is more complex as it is very close to the epoch of neutrino decoupling. We argue that neutrinos free-streaming out of overdense regions may actually hinder PBH formation.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. The statistics of curvature-profile dispersion in primordial black hole formation

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  3. Asteroid-mass Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter from Supersymmetry

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  7. Evaporation of Primordial Black Holes in a Thermal Universe: A Thermofield Dynamics Approach

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