Observational implications of cosmologically coupled black holes

TL;DR

This paper explores the astrophysical consequences of black holes whose masses grow with the universe's volume, suggesting significant impacts on gravitational wave signals, black hole rotation, and evaporation stability.

Contribution

It critically examines the observational implications of cosmologically coupled black holes, highlighting conflicts with current gravitational wave data and galaxy observations.

Findings

Black hole merger rates would be much higher than observed.

Supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies should be slowly rotating.

Small black holes could be stabilized against evaporation.

Abstract

It was recently suggested that "cosmologically coupled" black holes with masses that increase in proportion to the volume of the Universe might constitute the physical basis of dark energy. We take this claim at face value and discuss its potential astrophysical implications. We show that the gravitational wave emission in binary systems would be significantly enhanced so that the number of black hole mergers would exceed the observed rate by orders of magnitude, with typical masses much larger than those seen by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network. Separately, if the mass growth happens at fixed angular momentum, the supermassive black holes in matter-deficient elliptical galaxies should be slowly rotating. Finally, cosmological coupling would stabilize small black holes against Hawking radiation-induced evaporation.