Cosmic Whispers of the Early Universe: Gravitational Waves and Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes

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Auteur principal: Iovino, Antonio Junior
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Iovino, Antonio Junior
author_facet Iovino, Antonio Junior
contents Various mechanisms have been suggested for the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), and this thesis focuses on the standard mechanism based on the critical collapse of cosmological fluctuations. The underlying idea is that during inflation, a period of rapid expansion in the early Universe, large cosmological fluctuations could have been generated. After inflation, when the cosmic horizon reached a size comparable to these fluctuations, if the latter were high enough, they could collapse and form a PBH. Beyond the fascinating possibility that these compact objects might make up all or part of the Dark Matter (DM) we observe today, their formation and existence is also associated with the generation of gravitational waves (GWs). These waves could contribute to the merger events observed by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Collaboration (LVK) or account for signals detected by pulsar timing array experiments (PTA). In the first part of this thesis, we investigate the PBH scenario, examining the computation of the abundance beyond the Gaussian paradigm. In the second part, we discuss how PBH formation can produce a stochastic GW background and how observations, related to recent experiments such as LVK and PTA collaborations, can help in distinguishing between different PBH production models. Finally, in the last part, we investigate some aspects of the interplay between black holes and fundamental physics in the early Universe, describing some characteristics and challenges of various PBH production models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_03065
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cosmic Whispers of the Early Universe: Gravitational Waves and Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes
Iovino, Antonio Junior
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Various mechanisms have been suggested for the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), and this thesis focuses on the standard mechanism based on the critical collapse of cosmological fluctuations. The underlying idea is that during inflation, a period of rapid expansion in the early Universe, large cosmological fluctuations could have been generated. After inflation, when the cosmic horizon reached a size comparable to these fluctuations, if the latter were high enough, they could collapse and form a PBH. Beyond the fascinating possibility that these compact objects might make up all or part of the Dark Matter (DM) we observe today, their formation and existence is also associated with the generation of gravitational waves (GWs). These waves could contribute to the merger events observed by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Collaboration (LVK) or account for signals detected by pulsar timing array experiments (PTA). In the first part of this thesis, we investigate the PBH scenario, examining the computation of the abundance beyond the Gaussian paradigm. In the second part, we discuss how PBH formation can produce a stochastic GW background and how observations, related to recent experiments such as LVK and PTA collaborations, can help in distinguishing between different PBH production models. Finally, in the last part, we investigate some aspects of the interplay between black holes and fundamental physics in the early Universe, describing some characteristics and challenges of various PBH production models.
title Cosmic Whispers of the Early Universe: Gravitational Waves and Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03065