NANOGrav Data Hints at Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter.

The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently published strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process that may be interpreted as a stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a signal can be explained by second-order gravitational waves produced during the formation of primordial black holes from the collapse of sizeable scalar perturbations generated during inflation. This possibility has two predictions: (i) the primordial black holes may comprise the totality of the dark matter with the dominant contribution to their mass function falling in the range (10^{-15}÷10^{-11})M_{⊙} and (ii) the gravitational wave stochastic background will be seen as well by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna experiment.

GW190521 Mass Gap Event and the Primordial Black Hole Scenario.

The LIGO/Virgo Collaboration has recently observed GW190521, the first binary black hole merger with at least the primary component mass in the mass gap predicted by the pair-instability supernova theory. This observation disfavors the standard stellar-origin formation scenario for the heavier black hole, motivating alternative hypotheses. We show that GW190521 cannot be explained within the primordial black hole (PBH) scenario if PBHs do not accrete during their cosmological evolution, since this would require an abundance which is already in tension with current constraints. On the other hand, GW190521 may have a primordial origin if PBHs accrete efficiently before the reionization epoch.

Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter: LISA Serendipity.

There has recently been renewed interest in the possibility that the dark matter in the Universe consists of primordial black holes (PBHs). Current observational constraints leave only a few PBH mass ranges for this possibility. One of them is around 10^{-12} M_{⊙}. If PBHs with this mass are formed due to an enhanced scalar-perturbation amplitude, their formation is inevitably accompanied by the generation of gravitational waves (GWs) with frequency peaked in the mHz range, precisely around the maximum sensitivity of the LISA mission. We show that, if these primordial black holes are the dark matter, LISA will be able to detect the associated GW power spectrum. Although the GW source signal is intrinsically non-Gaussian, the signal measured by LISA is a sum of the signal from a large number of independent sources suppressing the non-Gaussianity at detection to an unobservable level. We also discuss the effect of the GW propagation in the perturbed Universe. PBH dark matter generically leads to a detectable, purely isotropic, Gaussian and unpolarized GW signal, a prediction that is testable with LISA.

Cosmological Signature of the Standard Model Higgs Vacuum Instability: Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter.

For the current central values of the Higgs boson and top quark masses, the standard model Higgs potential develops an instability at a scale of the order of 10^{11} GeV. We show that a cosmological signature of such instability could be dark matter in the form of primordial black holes seeded by Higgs fluctuations during inflation. The existence of dark matter might not require physics beyond the standard model.

Primordial black holes from Higgs vacuum instability: avoiding fine-tuning through an ultraviolet safe mechanism.

We have recently proposed the idea that dark matter in our universe is formed by primordial black holes generated by Standard Model Higgs fluctuations during inflation and thanks to the fact that the Standard Model Higgs potential develops an instability at a scale of the order of 10 11 GeV. In this sense, dark matter does not need any physics beyond the Standard Model, although the mechanism needs fine-tuning to avoid the overshooting of the Higgs into the dangerous AdS vacuum. We show how such fine-tuning can be naturally avoided by coupling the Higgs to a very heavy scalar with mass ≫ 10 11 GeV that stabilises the potential in the deep ultraviolet, but preserving the basic feature of the mechanism which is built within the Standard Model.

Baryogenesis at low reheating temperatures

We note that the maximum temperature during reheating can be much greater than the reheating temperature T(r) at which the universe becomes radiation dominated. We show that the standard model anomalous (B+L)-violating processes can therefore be in thermal equilibrium for 1 GeV less, similarT(r)<<100 GeV. Electroweak baryogenesis could work and the traditional upper bound on the Higgs mass coming from the requirement of the preservation of the baryon asymmetry may be relaxed. Alternatively, the baryon asymmetry may be reprocessed by sphaleron transitions either from a (B-L) asymmetry generated by the Affleck-Dine mechanism or from a chiral asymmetry between e(R) and e(L) in a B-L = 0 universe.

Possibility of observable amount of gravitational waves from inflation.

The curvaton and inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario. The basic assumption of these mechanisms is that the initial curvature perturbation due to the inflaton field is negligible. This is usually attained by lowering the energy scale of inflation, thereby concluding that the amount of gravitational waves produced during inflation is highly suppressed. We show that the curvaton and inhomogeneous reheating scenarios are compatible with a level of gravity-wave fluctuations which may well be observed in future satellite experiments.