Detecting Planetary-mass Primordial Black Holes with Resonant Electromagnetic Gravitational Wave Detectors

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of high-frequency electromagnetic detectors, based on the inverse Gertsenshtein effect, to detect gravitational waves from planetary-mass primordial black hole binaries, offering a new observational window into dark matter and early universe phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces two patented EM detector designs capable of detecting high-frequency GWs from primordial black holes, with sensitivity estimates and potential cosmological applications.

Findings

Detectors could achieve strain sensitivities of ~10^{-30}

Detection of PBH binaries around 10^{-5} solar masses is feasible

Potential to probe early universe GW backgrounds up to GUT energies

Abstract

The possibility to detect gravitational waves (GW) from planetary-mass primordial black hole (PBH) binaries with electromagnetic (EM) detectors of high-frequency GWs is investigated. We consider two patented experimental designs, based on the inverse Gertsenshtein effect, in which incoming GWs passing through a static magnetic field induce EM excitations inside either a TM cavity or a TEM waveguide. The frequency response of the detectors is computed for post-newtonian GW waveforms. We find that such EM detectors based on current technology may achieve a strain sensitivity down to $h \sim 10^{-30}$, which generates an EM power variation of $10^{-10}$ W. This allows the detection of PBH binary mergers of mass around $10^{-5} M_\odot$ if they constitute more than $0.01$ percent of the dark matter, as suggested by recent microlensing observations. We envision that this class of detectors could also be used to detect cosmological GW backgrounds and probe sources in the early Universe at energies up to the GUT scale.