Supermassive Primordial Black Holes From Inflation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hooper, Dan, Ireland, Aurora, Krnjaic, Gordan, Stebbins, Albert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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_version_ 1866916131640442880
author Hooper, Dan
Ireland, Aurora
Krnjaic, Gordan
Stebbins, Albert
author_facet Hooper, Dan
Ireland, Aurora
Krnjaic, Gordan
Stebbins, Albert
contents There is controversy surrounding the origin and evolution of our universe's largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In this study, we consider the possibility that some of these black holes formed from the direct collapse of primordial density perturbations. Since the mass of a primordial black hole is limited by the size of the cosmological horizon at the time of collapse, these SMBHs must form rather late, and are naively in conflict with constraints from CMB spectral distortions. These limits can be avoided, however, if the distribution of primordial curvature perturbations is highly non-Gaussian. After quantifying the departure from Gaussianity needed to evade these bounds, we explore a model of multi-field inflation -- a non-minimal, self-interacting curvaton model -- which has all the necessary ingredients to yield such dramatic non-Gaussianities. We leave the detailed model building and numerics to a future study, however, as our goal is to highlight the challenges associated with forming SMBHs from direct collapse and to identify features that a successful model would need to have. This study is particularly timely in light of recent observations of high-redshift massive galaxy candidates by the James Webb Space Telescope as well as evidence from the NANOGrav experiment for a stochastic gravitational wave background consistent with SMBH mergers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2308_00756
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Supermassive Primordial Black Holes From Inflation
Hooper, Dan
Ireland, Aurora
Krnjaic, Gordan
Stebbins, Albert
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
There is controversy surrounding the origin and evolution of our universe's largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In this study, we consider the possibility that some of these black holes formed from the direct collapse of primordial density perturbations. Since the mass of a primordial black hole is limited by the size of the cosmological horizon at the time of collapse, these SMBHs must form rather late, and are naively in conflict with constraints from CMB spectral distortions. These limits can be avoided, however, if the distribution of primordial curvature perturbations is highly non-Gaussian. After quantifying the departure from Gaussianity needed to evade these bounds, we explore a model of multi-field inflation -- a non-minimal, self-interacting curvaton model -- which has all the necessary ingredients to yield such dramatic non-Gaussianities. We leave the detailed model building and numerics to a future study, however, as our goal is to highlight the challenges associated with forming SMBHs from direct collapse and to identify features that a successful model would need to have. This study is particularly timely in light of recent observations of high-redshift massive galaxy candidates by the James Webb Space Telescope as well as evidence from the NANOGrav experiment for a stochastic gravitational wave background consistent with SMBH mergers.
title Supermassive Primordial Black Holes From Inflation
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.00756