Spectators no more! How even unimportant fields can ruin your Primordial Black Hole model

TL;DR

This paper shows that even small spectator fields during inflation can significantly increase primordial black hole production, challenging previous assumptions and highlighting the importance of these fields in realistic models.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic end of inflation mechanism via spectator fields, demonstrating their impact on primordial black hole abundance.

Findings

Spectator fields can increase PBH abundance by many orders of magnitude.

Inflaton power spectrum as low as 10^{-4} can still produce relevant PBHs.

Stochastic end of inflation due to spectator fields cannot be ignored in PBH models.

Abstract

In this work we terminate inflation during a phase of Constant Roll by means of a waterfall field coupled to the inflaton and a spectator field. The presence of a spectator field means that inflation does not end at a single point, $\phi_e$, but instead has some uncertainty resulting in a stochastic end of inflation. We find that even modestly coupled spectator fields can drastically increase the abundance of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) formed by many orders of magnitude. The power spectrum created by the inflaton can be as little as $10^{-4}$ during a phase of Ultra Slow-Roll and still form a cosmologically relevant number of PBHs. We conclude that the presence of spectator fields, which very generically will alter the end of inflation, is an effect that cannot be ignored in realistic models of PBH formation.