Intermediate Mass Black Hole Seeds from Cosmic String Loops

TL;DR

Cosmic string loops could explain the formation of both supermassive and intermediate mass black holes, including those detected by LIGO/VIRGO, by providing early universe seeds for black hole growth.

Contribution

This paper proposes a novel mechanism where cosmic string loops seed black holes across a range of masses, addressing gaps in black hole formation theories.

Findings

Large string loops can seed supermassive black holes.

Smaller loops can produce intermediate mass black holes, including those observed by LIGO/VIRGO.

Potential existence of up to one million intermediate black holes per galaxy.

Abstract

We demonstrate that cosmic string loops may provide a joint resolution of two mysteries surrounding recently observed black holes. For a string tension in an appropriate range, large radius string loops have the potential to provide the nonlinearities in the early universe which seed supermassive black holes. The more numerous smaller radius string loops can then seed intermediate mass black holes, including those with a mass in the region between 65 and 135 solar masses in which standard black hole formation scenarios predict no black holes are able to form, but which have recently been detected by the LIGO/VIRGO collaboration. We find that there could be as many as $10^6$ of intermediate mass black holes per galaxy, providing a tantalizing target for gravitational wave observatories to look for.