Implications for Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter from a Single Subsolar Mass Gravitational-wave Detection in LVK O1--O4
Abstract
The detection of sub-solar mass black holes is a milestone of modern astrophysics as it would open a window either onto new stellar physics or could potentially unveil the nature of Dark Matter as Primordial Black Holes (PBHs). On November 12, 2025, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration reported the compact binary merger candidate S251112cm, a system with no obvious electromagnetic counterpart, consistent with binary black hole merger with a chirp mass in the range . The probability that at least one component has mass 1 is . Inspired by this trigger, we tested if a population of PBHs formed at Quantum Chromodynamics epoch with a broad mass function could account for a signal of this type. Our results, corresponding to a predicted event rate of as seen by LVK O3b, suggest that the observed merger rate of if the trigger is confirmed as an astrophysical event would be compatible with such a model. Our predicted detection rate is also in agreement with current LVK expectations for stellar-mass binaries, remaining consistent with a scenario in which a non-negligible fraction of the mergers observed by LVK originate from Primordial Black Holes. If confirmed, this detection would place a lower limit to the PBH abundance for our adopted model.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.21295,
title = {Implications for Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter from a Single Subsolar Mass Gravitational-wave Detection in LVK O1--O4},
author = {Alberto Magaraggia and Nico Cappelluti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21295},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
9 pages, 2 figures, Published in ApJ. Title updated to match the accepted journal version; minor revisions to the text