A possible mass distribution of primordial black holes implied by LIGO-Virgo

Abstract

The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration has so far detected around 90 black holes, some of which have masses larger than what were expected from the collapse of stars. The mass distribution of LIGO-Virgo black holes appears to have a peak at $\sim 30M_{\odot }$ and two tails on the ends. By assuming that they all have a primordial origin, we analyze the GWTC-1 (O1\&O2) and GWTC-2 (O3a) datasets by performing maximum likelihood estimation on a broken power law mass function $f(m)$, with the result $f\propto m^{1.2}$ for $m<35M_{\odot }$ and $f\propto m^{-4}$ for $m>35M_{\odot }$. This appears to behave better than the popular log-normal mass function. Surprisingly, such a simple and unique distribution can be realized in our previously proposed mechanism of PBH formation, where the black holes are formed by vacuum bubbles that nucleate during inflation via quantum tunneling. Moreover, this mass distribution can also provide an explanation to supermassive black holes formed at high redshifts.

24 pages in revtex4, 5 figures

References in corpus (18)

• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• The merger rate of primordial-black-hole binaries
• Double Compact Objects III: Gravitational Wave Detection Rates
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• A Gravitational Wave Background from Reheating after Hybrid Inflation
• Understanding caustic crossings in giant arcs: characteristic scales, event rates, and constraints on compact dark matter
• Two populations of LIGO-Virgo black holes
• Primordial Black Holes Confront LIGO/Virgo data: Current situation
• Constraining the primordial black hole scenario with Bayesian inference and machine learning: the GWTC-2 gravitational wave catalog
• Solving puzzles of GW150914 by primordial black holes
• Joint constraints on the field-cluster mixing fraction, common envelope efficiency, and globular cluster radii from a population of binary hole mergers via deep learning
• Supermassive black holes from primordial black hole seeds
• Primordial black hole merger rates: distributions for multiple LIGO observables
• When are LIGO/Virgo's Big Black-Hole Mergers?
• Primordial magnetic fields from preheating at the electroweak scale
• Primordial black hole formation by vacuum bubbles II
• The Observed Rate of Binary Black Hole Mergers can be Entirely Explained by Globular Clusters
• Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis: Dependence on Higgs mass and strength of CP-violation

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Science with the Einstein Telescope: a comparison of different designs
• Searching for a subpopulation of primordial black holes in LIGO/Virgo gravitational-wave data
• Primordial black hole production during first-order phase transitions
• From inflation to black hole mergers and back again: Gravitational-wave data-driven constraints on inflationary scenarios with a first-principle model of primordial black holes across the QCD epoch
• Stochastic gravitational-wave background as a tool to investigate multi-channel astrophysical and primordial black-hole mergers
• The Minimum Testable Abundance of Primordial Black Holes at Future Gravitational-Wave Detectors
• Constraining the Hubble constant to a precision of about 1% using multi-band dark standard siren detections
• How to assess the primordial origin of single gravitational-wave events with mass, spin, eccentricity, and deformability measurements
• First-order phase transition and fate of false vacuum remnants
• Searching for mass-spin correlations in the population of gravitational-wave events: the GWTC-3 case study
• Constraining the Merger History of Primordial-Black-Hole Binaries from GWTC-3
• Searching for Primordial Black Holes with the Einstein Telescope: impact of design and systematics
• Primordial black hole mergers from three-body interactions
• Detecting Subsolar-Mass Primordial Black Holes in Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals with LISA and Einstein Telescope
• Gravitational waves from Population III binary black holes are consistent with LIGO/Virgo O3a data for the chirp mass larger than $\sim 20M_{\odot }$
• Constraints on accreting primordial black holes with the global 21-cm signal
• Impact of dark matter spikes on the merger rates of Primordial Black Holes
• Implications of GWTC-3 on primordial black holes from vacuum bubbles
• Impact of radiation from primordial black holes on the 21-cm angular-power spectrum in the dark ages
• Confronting primordial black holes with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA and the Einstein Telescope
• Perturbation Theory Remixed II: Improved Modeling of Nonlinear Bispectrum
• Gravitational wave background from mergers of large primordial black holes