PBH Formation from Spherically Symmetric Hydrodynamical Perturbations: A Review

Abstract

Primordial black holes, which could have been formed in the very early Universe due to the collapse of large curvature fluctuations, are currently one of the most attractive and fascinating research areas in cosmology for their possible theoretical and observational implications. This review article presents the current results and developments on the conditions for primordial black hole formation from the collapse of curvature fluctuations in spherical symmetry on a Friedman–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker background and its numerical simulation. We review the appropriate formalism for the conditions of primordial black hole formation, and we detail a numerical implementation. We then focus on different results regarding the threshold and the black hole mass using different sets of curvature fluctuations. Finally, we present the current state of analytical estimations for the primordial black hole formation threshold, contrasted with numerical simulations.