English

PBH formation from overdensities in delayed vacuum transitions

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2023-11-30 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Primordial black hole (PBH) formation from first-order phase transitions (FOPTs) combines two prevalent elements of beyond the Standard Model physics with wide-ranging consequences. We elaborate on a recently proposed scenario in which inhomogeneities in vacuum energy decay seed the overdensities that collapse to PBHs. In this scenario, the PBH mass is determined by the Hubble mass as in conventional formation scenarios, while its number density is determined by the nucleation dynamics of the FOPT. We present a detailed study of the formation probability including parameter dependencies. In addition, we generate populations in the open mass window as well as for the HSC and OGLE candidate microlensing events. This mechanism inevitably creates PBHs in generic FOPTs, with significant populations produced in slow and moderately strong phase transitions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.14037,
  title  = {PBH formation from overdensities in delayed vacuum transitions},
  author = {Kiyoharu Kawana and TaeHun Kim and Philip Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.14037},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages, 7 figures; matches with the published version; discussions significantly improved

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:55:13.496Z