Revisiting primordial black holes capture into neutron stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates the process of primordial black holes being captured by neutron stars, detailing the capture, settling, and growth phases, and exploring potential observational signals like gravitational waves.

Contribution

It introduces novel insights into the capture and growth of PBHs within neutron stars, including the role of Bondi accretion and potential gravitational wave signatures.

Findings

PBH capture can lead to neutron star transmutation into black holes.

Gravitational wave signals from accretion are periodic at a few kHz.

Potential observational warning signals for nearby Galactic events.

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBH), produced through a variety of processes in the early universe, could fill galactic halos accounting for a fraction or the totality of the dark matter. In particular, PBH with sub-stellar masses could be captured by stars, start to swallow their material, and eventually turn them into BH, hence originating a peculiar new type of stellar catastrophic event. Here we revisit this process in the most favorable case of PBH capture by neutron stars. We detail a number of novel features in the capture phase, during the settling within the star and mass growth of the PBH, and illustrate some phenomenological consequences. In particular, we point out that in the subsonic regime the PBH drag takes the form of a Bondi accretion. As a result, the onset of the final transmutation of the NS into a stellar sized BH is expected with the PBH seed in slight off-center position. We also compute the gravitational wave energy-loss and signals associated to different phases of the PBH-stellar interaction. In particular, the emission associated to the accretion phase is periodic with a few kHz frequency; in the rare case of a nearby Galactic event and for light PBH, it could constitute a warning of the forthcoming transmutation.