Primordial Black Holes and Scalar-induced Gravitational Waves in Sneutrino Hybrid Inflation

TL;DR

This paper explores how primordial black holes could form from curvature perturbations during sneutrino-driven hybrid inflation, linking PBH dark matter, gravitational waves, and neutrino physics within a supersymmetric framework.

Contribution

It introduces a novel inflationary scenario where PBHs and gravitational waves are generated from waterfall phase transitions involving sneutrinos, with detailed model analysis and observational predictions.

Findings

PBHs can account for all or part of dark matter.

Predicted gravitational wave signals are detectable by future observatories.

Model parameters are consistent with current Planck data and involve mild fine-tuning.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) can be formed from large curvature perturbations generated during the waterfall phase transition in a supersymmetric scenario where sneutrino is the inflaton in a hybrid inflationary framework. We obtain a spectral index ($n_s \simeq 0.966$), and a tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r\simeq 0.0056-10^{-11}$), consistent with the current Planck data satisfying PBH as dark matter (DM) and detectable Gravitational Wave (GW) signal. Our findings show that the mass of PBH and the peak in the GW spectrum is correlated with the right-handed (s)neutrino mass. We identify parameter space where PBHs can be the entire DM candidate of the universe (with mass $10^{-13}\, M_\odot$) or a fraction of it. This can be tested in future observatories, for example, with amplitude $\Omega_{\rm GW}h^2$ $\sim 10^{-9}$ and peak frequency $f\sim 0.1$ Hz in LISA and $\Omega_{\rm GW}h^2 \sim 10^{-11}$ and peak frequency of $\sim 10$ Hz in ET via second-order GW signals. We study two models of sneutrino inflation: Model$-1$ involves canonical sneutrino kinetic term which predicts the sub-Planckian mass parameter $M$, while the coupling between a gauge singlet and the waterfall field, $\beta$, needs to be quite large whereas, for the model$-2$ involving $\alpha-$attractor canonical sneutrino kinetic term, $\beta$ can take a natural value. Estimating explicitly, we show that both models have mild fine-tuning. We also derive an analytical expression for the power spectrum in terms of the microphysics parameters of the model like (s)neutrino mass, etc. that fits well with the numerical results. The typical reheat temperature for both the models is around $10^{7}-10^{8}$~GeV suitable for non-thermal leptogenesis.