The impact of primordial black holes on the stellar mass function of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Esser, Nicolas, De Rijcke, Sven, Tinyakov, Peter
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Esser, Nicolas
De Rijcke, Sven
Tinyakov, Peter
author_facet Esser, Nicolas
De Rijcke, Sven
Tinyakov, Peter
contents If primordial black holes constitute the dark matter, stars forming in dark-matter dominated environments with low velocity dispersions, such as ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, may capture a black hole at birth. The capture probability is non-negligible for primordial black holes of masses around $10^{20}$g, and increases with stellar mass. Moreover, infected stars are turned into virtually invisible black holes on cosmologically short timescales. Hence, the number of observed massive main-sequence stars in ultra-faint dwarfs should be suppressed if the dark matter was made of asteroid-mass primordial black holes. This would impact the measured mass distribution of stars, making it top-light (i.e. depleted in the high-mass range). Using simulated data that mimic the present-day observational power of telescopes, we show that already existing measurements of the mass function of stars in local ultra-faint dwarfs could be used to constrain the fraction of dark matter composed of primordial black holes in the -- currently unconstrained -- mass range of $10^{19}-10^{21}$g.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_12658
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The impact of primordial black holes on the stellar mass function of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
Esser, Nicolas
De Rijcke, Sven
Tinyakov, Peter
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
If primordial black holes constitute the dark matter, stars forming in dark-matter dominated environments with low velocity dispersions, such as ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, may capture a black hole at birth. The capture probability is non-negligible for primordial black holes of masses around $10^{20}$g, and increases with stellar mass. Moreover, infected stars are turned into virtually invisible black holes on cosmologically short timescales. Hence, the number of observed massive main-sequence stars in ultra-faint dwarfs should be suppressed if the dark matter was made of asteroid-mass primordial black holes. This would impact the measured mass distribution of stars, making it top-light (i.e. depleted in the high-mass range). Using simulated data that mimic the present-day observational power of telescopes, we show that already existing measurements of the mass function of stars in local ultra-faint dwarfs could be used to constrain the fraction of dark matter composed of primordial black holes in the -- currently unconstrained -- mass range of $10^{19}-10^{21}$g.
title The impact of primordial black holes on the stellar mass function of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.12658