English

Primordial black hole formation with full numerical relativity

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2022-03-25 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study the formation of black holes from subhorizon and superhorizon perturbations in a matter dominated universe with 3+1D numerical relativity simulations. We find that there are two primary mechanisms of formation depending on the initial perturbation's mass and geometry -- via direct collapse\textit{direct collapse} of the initial overdensity and via post-collapse accretion\textit{post-collapse accretion} of the ambient dark matter. In particular, for the latter case, the initial perturbation does not have to satisfy the hoop conjecture for a black hole to form. In both cases, the duration of the formation the process is around a Hubble time, and the initial mass of the black hole is MBH102H1MPl2M_\mathrm{BH} \sim 10^{-2} H^{-1} M_\mathrm{Pl}^2. Post formation, we find that the PBH undergoes rapid mass growth beyond the self-similar limit MBHH1M_\mathrm{BH}\propto H^{-1}, at least initially. We argue that this implies that most of the final mass of the PBH is accreted from its ambient surroundings post formation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.04896,
  title  = {Primordial black hole formation with full numerical relativity},
  author = {Eloy de Jong and Josu C. Aurrekoetxea and Eugene A. Lim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.04896},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

12 pages, 8 figures. 2 YouTube videos here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSkfizpQDrcZuKZPQydJA9l_pxxWpqIMz

R2 v1 2026-06-24T05:51:42.393Z