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Cosmic Conundra Explained by Thermal History and Primordial Black Holes

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arxiv 1906.08217 v4 pith:X7NSZMCA submitted 2019-06-19 astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-phhep-th

Cosmic Conundra Explained by Thermal History and Primordial Black Holes

classification astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-phhep-th
keywords blackprimordialcosmicholeholesodotconundradetection
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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A universal mechanism may be responsible for several unresolved cosmic conundra. The sudden drop in the pressure of relativistic matter at $W^{\pm}/Z^{0}$ decoupling, the quark--hadron transition and $e^{+}e^{-}$ annihilation enhances the probability of primordial black hole (PBH) formation in the early Universe. Assuming the amplitude of the primordial curvature fluctuations is approximately scale-invariant, this implies a multi-modal PBH mass spectrum with peaks at $10^{-6}$, 1, 30, and $10^{6}\,M_{\odot}$. This suggests a unified PBH scenario which naturally explains the dark matter and recent microlensing observations, the LIGO/Virgo black hole mergers, the correlations in the cosmic infrared and X-ray backgrounds, and the origin of the supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei at high redshift. A distinctive prediction of our model is that LIGO/Virgo should observe black hole mergers in the mass gaps between 2 and $5\,M_{\odot}$ (where no stellar remnants are expected) and above $65\,M_{\odot}$ (where pair-instability supernovae occur) and low-mass-ratios in between. Therefore the recent detection of events GW190425, GW190814 and GW190521 with these features is striking confirmation of our prediction and may indicate a primordial origin for the black holes. In this case, the exponential sensitivity of the PBH abundance to the equation of state would offer a unique probe of the QCD phase transition. The detection of PBHs would also offer a novel way to probe the existence of new particles or phase transitions with energy between $1\,{\rm MeV}$ and $10^{10}\,$GeV.

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Cited by 12 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. The swallowed spike: the formation of light primordial black hole structures around heavy seeds

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Light PBHs around heavy primordial seeds form significantly less dense inner cores than particle DM because no studied torque mechanism prevents capture.

  3. The swallowed spike: the formation of light primordial black hole structures around heavy seeds

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 accept novelty 7.0

    No torque mechanism studied supplies enough angular momentum for the innermost light-PBH shells around a heavy seed, so the spike core is swallowed and far less dense than a WIMP spike.

  4. The gravitational-wave fingerprint of dynamically assembled primordial black hole cluster seeds in JWST's Little Red Dots

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.5

    Strongly clustered PBHs with a QCD-broad mass function form IMBH nuclei plus light-PBH swarms that assemble LRD-scale seeds in 10-50 Myr and radiate a truncated f^{2/3} GW background topped by a ringdown comb.

  5. Primordial Black Hole mass growth from neutrinos during the radiation era

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.5

    Neutrino absorption lets intermediate-mass and supermassive primordial black holes grow during the radiation era, shifting thermal-history peaks and raising f_PBH.

  6. $\tt BlackHawk$ $\tt v3.0$: Hawking Radiation from Regular Black Holes

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    BlackHawk v3.0 adds Hawking temperatures and greybody factors for multiple regular black hole metrics to an existing public code via numerical routines.

  7. Signatures of loop quantum gravity in primordial black hole cosmologies

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    PBH masses near 10^3 kg allow Hawking evaporation to reheat the universe while Planckian remnants comprise all present-day DM without fine-tuning initial abundance, yielding testable GW signals.

  8. Beyond the Standard Model of Cosmology: Testing new paradigms with a Multiprobe Exploration of the Dark Universe

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Proposes primordial black holes from modified small-scale fluctuations and entropic acceleration in expanding spacetime as explanations for dark matter and dark energy.

  9. Unveiling the Gravitational Universe at \mu-Hz Frequencies

    astro-ph.IM 2019-08 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Proposal for a μ-Hz space-based gravitational wave interferometer to observe massive black hole binaries in early inspiral and low-frequency galactic binaries.

  10. Unraveling the Imprints of Fluctuation-dynamo on the Intracluster Medium with the SKA

    astro-ph.GA 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    MHD simulations indicate that SKA-Mid Band 5a can detect filamentary polarized emission from ICM magnetic fields at high resolution and sensitivity, allowing inference of turbulence driving scales.

  11. Constraints on Primordial Black Holes

    astro-ph.CO 2020-02 accept novelty 4.0

    Updated compilation shows PBHs are tightly constrained across 55 orders of magnitude in mass, ruling out dominant dark matter contributions except in narrow windows, with many limits carrying observational uncertainties.

  12. Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments

    astro-ph.CO 2020-06 unverdicted novelty 3.0

    Primordial black holes in specific mass ranges could account for some or all dark matter while resolving structure-formation and seed problems in standard cosmology.