Primordial Black Holes (as Dark Matter) from the Supercooled Phase Transitions with Radiative Symmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation of primordial black holes from supercooled phase transitions with radiative symmetry breaking, providing model-independent results on their properties and potential explanations for microlensing anomalies.

Contribution

It offers a detailed, model-independent analysis of PBH production during supercooled RSB phase transitions, including their mass, spin, and abundance predictions.

Findings

PBHs are generically produced in broad parameter regions.

The decay rate of false vacuum grows exponentially, validating common assumptions.

A Standard-Model extension with RSB can explain microlensing anomalies.

Abstract

We study in detail the production of primordial black holes (PBHs), as well as their mass and initial spin, due to the phase transitions corresponding to radiative symmetry breaking (RSB) and featuring a large supercooling. The latter property allows us to use a model-independent approach. In this context, we demonstrate that the decay rate of the false vacuum grows exponentially with time to a high degree of accuracy, justifying a time dependence commonly assumed in the literature. Our study provides ready-to-use results for determining the abundance, mass and initial spin of PBHs generated in a generic RSB model with large supercooling. We find that PBHs are generically produced in a broad region of the model-independent parameter space. As an application, we identify the subregion that may explain recently reported microlensing anomalies. Additionally, we show that a simple Standard-Model extension, with right-handed neutrinos and gauged $B-L$ featuring RSB, may explain an anomaly of this sort in a region of its parameter space.