Detection prospects for the GW background of Galactic (sub)solar mass primordial black holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gravitational wave signals from Galactic primordial black hole binaries in multi-component dark matter models, assessing their detectability by LISA and future observatories, and providing predictions for GW background and individual binary detections.

Contribution

It models the formation and evolution of Galactic PBH binaries, predicting their GW signals and detection prospects with current and future GW observatories.

Findings

Galactic PBH binaries have high orbital eccentricities.

The GW background peaks in the millihertz range for certain PBH masses.

LISA can detect a few individual PBH binaries if their abundance is sufficiently high.

Abstract

In multi-component dark matter models, a fraction $f_\text{pbh}$ of the dark matter could be in the form of primordial black holes (PBHs) with (sub)solar masses. Some would have formed binaries that presently trace the Milky Way halo of particle dark matter. We explore the gravitational wave (GW) signal produced by such a hypothetical population of Galactic PBH binaries and assess its detectability by the LISA experiment. For this purpose, we model the formation and evolution of early-type PBH binaries accounting for GW hardening and binary disruption in the Milky Way. Our analysis reveals that the present-day Galactic population of PBH binaries is characterized by very high orbital eccentricities $|1-e|\ll 1$. For a PBH mass $M_{\rm pbh} \sim 0.1 - 1 M_\odot$, this yields a GW background that peaks in the millihertz frequency range where the LISA instrumental noise is minimum. While this signal remains below the LISA detection threshold for viable $f_\text{pbh}\lesssim 0.01$, future GW observatories such as DECIGO and BBO could detect it if $0.01\lesssim M_{\rm pbh} \lesssim 0.1 M_\odot$. Furthermore, we anticipate that, after 5 years of observations, LISA should be able to detect $\mathcal{O}(100)$ (resp. $\mathcal{O}(1)$) loud Galactic PBH binaries of mass $M_{\rm pbh} \sim 0.1 - 1 M_\odot$ with a SNR $\geq 5$ if $f_{\rm pbh}=0.01$ (resp. $f_{\rm pbh}=0.001$). Nonlinear effects not considered here such as mass accretion and dynamical capture could alter these predictions.