Author:
Gow Andrew,Miranda Tays,Nurmi Sami
Abstract
Abstract
We investigate the production of primordial black holes (PBHs) in a mixed inflaton-curvaton scenario with a quadratic curvaton potential, assuming the curvaton is in de Sitter equilibrium during inflation with 〈χ〉 = 0. In this setup, the curvature perturbation sourced by the curvaton is strongly non-Gaussian, containing no leading Gaussian term. We show that for m
2/H
2 ≳ 0.3, the curvaton contribution to the spectrum of primordial perturbations on CMB scales can be kept negligible but on small scales the curvaton can source PBHs. In particular, PBHs in the asteroid mass range 10-16
M
⊙ ≲ M ≲ 10-10
M
⊙ with an abundance reaching F
PBH = 1 can be produced when the inflationary Hubble scale H ≳ 1012 GeV and the curvaton decay occurs in the window from slightly before the electroweak transition to around the QCD transition.
Subject
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Reference98 articles.
1. The Hypothesis of Cores Retarded during Expansion and the Hot Cosmological Model;Zel'dovich;Soviet Astron.,1967
2. Gravitationally collapsed objects of very low mass;Hawking;Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc.,1971
3. Cosmological effects of primordial black holes;Chapline;Nature,1975
4. Constraints on primordial black holes;Carr;Rept. Prog. Phys.,2021
5. Did LIGO detect dark matter?;Bird;Phys. Rev. Lett.,2016