Black Hole Production of Monopoles in the Early Universe

TL;DR

This paper explores how evaporating black holes in the early universe can generate monopoles through the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, potentially leading to cosmological overclosure if reheat temperatures are sufficiently high.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for monopole production via black hole-induced plasma heating and analyzes its implications for early universe cosmology.

Findings

Black hole reheating can produce monopoles efficiently.

Reheat temperatures above ~500 GeV risk overclosing the universe.

Black hole plasma effects are significant for early universe phase transitions.

Abstract

In the early universe, evaporating black holes heat up the surrounding plasma and create a temperature profile around the black hole that can be more important than the black hole itself. As an example, we demonstrate how the hot plasma surrounding evaporating black holes can efficiently produce monopoles via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. In the case where black holes reheat the universe, reheat temperatures above $\sim 500$ GeV can already lead to monopoles overclosing the universe.