Testing Super-Heavy Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes with Gravitational Waves

Abstract

Ultra-light primordial black holes with masses $M_{BH}<10^9$~g evaporate before big-bang nucleosynthesis producing all matter fields, including dark matter, in particular super-heavy dark matter: $M_{DM}\gtrsim 10^{10}$ GeV. If the dark matter gets its mass via $U(1)$ symmetry-breaking, the phase transition that gives a mass to the dark matter also produces cosmic strings which radiate gravitational waves. Because the symmetry-breaking scale ${\Lambda }_{CS}$ is of the same order as $M_{DM}$, the gravitational waves radiated by the cosmic strings have a large enough amplitude to be detectable across all frequencies accessible with current and planned experimental facilities. Moreover, an epoch of early primordial black hole domination introduces a unique spectral break in the gravitational wave spectrum whose frequency is related to the super-heavy dark matter mass. Hence, the features of a stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves could indicate that super-heavy dark matter originated from primordial black holes. In this perspective, the recent finding of a stochastic common-spectrum process across many pulsars by two nano-frequency pulsar timing arrays would fix the dark matter mass to be $3\times 10^{13}\text{GeV}\lesssim M_{DM}\lesssim 10^{14}\text{GeV}$. The (non-)detection of a spectral break at $0.2\text{Hz}\lesssim f_{\ast }\lesssim 0.4\text{Hz}$ would (exclude) substantiate this interpretation of the signal.

29 pages, 7 figures, matches with the JCAP version

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Primordial black hole constraints with Hawking radiation -- a review
• Cogenesis of Baryon Asymmetry and Gravitational Dark Matter from Primordial Black Holes
• Leptogenesis and Dark Matter Through Relativistic Bubble Walls with Observable Gravitational Waves
• Gravitational wave signatures of PBH-generated baryon-dark matter coincidence
• PBH-infused seesaw origin of matter and unique gravitational waves
• Gravitational Waves-Tomography of Low-Scale-Leptogenesis
• Probing Miracle-less WIMP Dark Matter via Gravitational Waves Spectral Shapes
• Bounds from multi-messenger astronomy on the Super Heavy Dark Matter