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No massive black holes in the Milky Way halo

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arxiv 2403.02386 v3 pith:GBFICSRZ submitted 2024-03-04 astro-ph.GA astro-ph.COgr-qchep-exhep-ph

No massive black holes in the Milky Way halo

classification astro-ph.GA astro-ph.COgr-qchep-exhep-ph
keywords blackeventsholesdarkmattercannotgravitationalmass
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The gravitational wave detectors have unveiled a population of massive black holes that do not resemble those observed in the Milky Way and whose origin is debated. According to one possible explanation, these black holes may have formed from density fluctuations in the early Universe (primordial black holes), and they should comprise from several to 100% of dark matter to explain the observed black hole merger rates. If such black holes existed in the Milky Way dark matter halo, they would cause long-timescale gravitational microlensing events lasting years. The previous experiments were not sufficiently sensitive to such events. Here we present the results of the search for long-timescale microlensing events among the light curves of nearly 80 million stars located in the Large Magellanic Cloud that were monitored for 20 years by the OGLE survey. We did not find any events with timescales longer than one year, whereas all shorter events detected may be explained by known stellar populations. We find that compact objects in the mass range from $1.8 \times 10^{-4}$ to $6.3\,M_{\odot}$ cannot compose more than 1% of dark matter, and those in the mass range from $1.3 \times 10^{-5}$ to $860\,M_{\odot}$ cannot make up more than 10% of dark matter. Thus, primordial black holes in this mass range cannot simultaneously explain a significant fraction of dark matter and gravitational wave events.

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Cited by 15 Pith papers

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

  1. Constraints on the Primordial Black Hole Abundance using Pulsar Parameter Drifts

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    The first search for scalar-induced gravitational waves via pulsar parameter drifts yields f_PBH < 10^{-10} (95% CL) for PBH masses 0.3 to 4e4 solar masses, strongly disfavoring a primordial black hole origin for LVK ...

  2. Microscopic primordial black holes as macroscopic dark matter from large extra dimensions

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    In the ADD extra-dimension model, microscopic primordial black holes undergo runaway accretion and grow to macroscopic scales, allowing them to comprise all dark matter with initial abundances as low as 10^{-44}.

  3. Microlensing Detection and Inference via Learned Bayes Factors

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    A unified transformer-based pipeline detects 99.9% of recoverable simulated microlensing events and outperforms literature hard cuts in the short-duration finite-source regime with amortized neural posterior inference.

  4. PBHs and GWs from Scaling Monopoles

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Scaling monopoles generate PBHs via stochastic overdensities and GWs with correlated spectra, potentially with magnetically charged PBHs as a signature if the scaling ends via gauge boson mass.

  5. Constraints on primordial black holes from the first part of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 conditional novelty 6.0

    O4a gravitational-wave data give 95% CL upper limits f_PBH ~ 1e-2 to 1e-4 for monochromatic primordial black holes with mean masses 0.6-100 M_sun, with no evidence of a PBH merger component.

  6. Across the Universe: GW231123 as a magnified and diffracted black hole merger

    astro-ph.GA 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0

    GW231123's extreme mass and spins may be explained by a point-mass microlens embedded in a galaxy, reducing the inferred source mass to about 100-180 solar masses.

  7. GW231123: A Possible Primordial Black Hole Origin

    astro-ph.CO 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0

    GW231123's masses and high spins are consistent with primordial black holes that accreted mass and angular momentum in the early universe within the standard PBH framework.

  8. Constraints on Primordial Black Hole Dressed by Dark Matter Halo from Microlensing Effect of Fast Radio Bursts

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    A new conversion formula turns monochromatic bare-PBH microlensing bounds into extended-mass dressed-PBH bounds, and a 10^5-FRB forecast places f_PBH near 10^-4.

  9. Lattice study of primordial black hole formation in bumpy axion inflation

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Lattice simulations of bumpy axion U(1) inflation in the strong backreaction regime generate curvature perturbations large enough for primordial black holes to comprise all dark matter.

  10. Constraints on primordial black holes from the first part of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O4a data yields the strongest constraints on primordial black hole abundance for 0.6-100 solar masses, with resolvable mergers dominating the limits and no compelling evidence for a PBH contribution i...

  11. Purely quadratic non-Gaussianity from tachyonic instability: Primordial black holes and scalar-induced gravitational waves

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 conditional novelty 5.0

    For tachyonic models with ζ=A(φ²−σ²), the PBH abundance is exponentially set by the correlation ρ between field and radial gradient; narrow spectra drive ρ→−1 and suppress PBH formation without killing the induced GW signal.

  12. Purely quadratic non-Gaussianity from tachyonic instability: Primordial black holes and scalar-induced gravitational waves

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Purely quadratic non-Gaussianity from tachyonic instability allows narrow curvature spectra to exponentially suppress primordial black hole overproduction via correlation coefficient ρ approaching -1 while retaining s...

  13. Precision Analysis for $\boldsymbol{H_0}$ Using Upcoming Multi-band Gravitational Wave Observations

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Multi-band GW observations of PBHs can reduce H0 uncertainty to ≲2 km/s/Mpc (conservative) or O(0.1) km/s/Mpc (optimistic) via Fisher forecasts on M_PBH and f_PBH.

  14. Probing Primordial Black Holes with upcoming Radio Telescopes: a case study for LOFAR2.0, FAST Core Array and BINGO

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    LOFAR2.0, FAST Core Array and BINGO can constrain the PBH dark matter fraction f_PBH below 0.16-0.39 for masses above 10^{-2} to 10 solar masses via FRB lensing statistics.

  15. Probing Primordial Black Holes with upcoming Radio Telescopes: a case study for LOFAR2.0, FAST Core Array and BINGO

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 conditional novelty 4.0

    LOFAR2.0, FAST Core Array and BINGO are forecast to bound f_PBH < 0.16 (M>1 Msun), <0.39 (M>10 Msun) and <0.39 (M>0.1 Msun) respectively from null FRB lensing.