Inferring the Merger History of Primordial Black Holes from Gravitational-Wave data and the Stochastic Signatures

TL;DR

This paper analyzes gravitational-wave data to infer the merger history of primordial black holes, highlighting their contribution to the stochastic gravitational-wave background and providing constraints on their merger rates and redshift evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian framework to analyze PBH merger rates from gravitational-wave data, incorporating high-redshift activity and stochastic background signatures.

Findings

Local PBH binary merger rate estimated at 23.5-30.3 Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}

Redshift evolution index of merger rate constrained to 2.19 ± 0.16

Potential of stochastic background observations to trace PBH merger history

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are well-motivated candidates for cold dark matter and may also account for a fraction of the binary black hole mergers observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. In this study, we investigate the gravitational-wave signatures of PBHs, with a particular focus on evaluating their integrated contribution to the stochastic gravitational-wave background arising from binary mergers over a broad range of redshifts. We perform a Bayesian analysis of gravitational-wave events following all Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog data, assuming a log-normal PBH mass function. We compute the merger rate distribution of PBH binaries by accounting for gravitational torques from the surrounding PBH. To constrain this rate, we employ the latest limits from the third observing run of LIGO/Virgo. Owing to their primordial origin, PBHs exhibit enhanced merger activity at high redshifts, prior to the onset of stellar formation. Our analysis yields a relatively weak inference on the redshift evolution index of the PBH merger rate, with $\alpha = 2.19^{+0.16}_{-0.16}$ at 68\% confidence level. The local merger rate of PBH binaries is found with posterior estimates lying in the range $23.5-30.3~\mathrm{Gpc}^{-3}\,\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$, reflecting a high degree of statistical precision in the inferred distribution. Additionally, we emphasize the potential of stochastic gravitational-wave background observations to probe the cumulative history of PBH mergers across cosmic time.