Primordial black holes in non-Gaussian regimes

Young, Sam and Byrnes, Christian T (2013) Primordial black holes in non-Gaussian regimes. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 08 (52). pp. 1-16. ISSN 1475-7516

[img]
Preview
PDF - Accepted Version
Download (470kB) | Preview

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) can form in the early Universe from the collapse of rare, large density fluctuations. They have never been observed, but this fact is enough to constrain the amplitude of fluctuations on very small scales which cannot be otherwise probed. Because PBHs form only in very rare large fluctuations, the number of PBHs formed is extremely sensitive to changes in the shape of the tail of the fluctuation distribution - which depends on the amount of non-Gaussianity present. We first study how local non-Gaussianity of arbitrary size up to fifth order affects the abundance and constraints from PBHs, finding that they depend strongly on even small amounts of non-Gaussianity and the upper bound on the allowed amplitude of the power spectrum can vary by several orders of magnitude. The sign of the non-linearity parameters (f_{NL}, g_{NL}, etc) are particularly important. We also study the abundance and constraints from PBHs in the curvaton scenario, in which case the complete non-linear probability distribution is known, and find that truncating to any given order (i.e. to order f_{NL} or g_{NL}, etc) does not give accurate results.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences > Physics and Astronomy
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy > QB0980 Cosmogony. Cosmology
Depositing User: Christian Byrnes
Date Deposited: 27 May 2014 11:24
Last Modified: 03 Jul 2019 02:06
URI: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/48814

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update