Primordial Black Hole Formation during a Strongly Coupled Crossover

TL;DR

This paper investigates how primordial black hole formation is affected during a strongly coupled crossover phase transition in the early universe, using gauge/gravity duality to model the process and finding an enhancement in certain mass ranges.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to modeling primordial black hole production during phase transitions using gauge/gravity duality, focusing on smooth crossovers.

Findings

Enhanced primordial black hole production in the mass range 10^{-16} to 10^{-6} solar masses.

Modeling of phase transitions via gauge/gravity duality.

Implications for primordial black hole abundance during early universe phase transitions.

Abstract

The final mass distribution of primordial black holes is sensitive to the equation of state of the Universe at the scales accessible by the power spectrum. Motivated by the presence of phase transitions in several beyond the Standard Model theories, some of which are strongly coupled, we analyze the production of primordial black holes during such phase transitions, which we model using the gauge/gravity duality. We focus in the (often regarded as physically uninteresting) case for which the phase transition is just a smooth crossover. We find an enhancement of primordial black hole production in the range $M_{\rm{PBH}}\in[10^{-16},10^{-6}]M_{\odot}$.