Multimessenger Probes of Primordial Black Holes with Gravitational Wave and 21 cm Observations

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) formed from the collapse of curvature perturbations in the early universe are known to have an associated gravitational wave signal sourced by the same scalar perturbations. In this work, we show that there is a complementarity between these gravitational waves and modifications of the 21 cm global signal during the cosmic dark ages due to PBH evaporation. For PBHs in the range $M_{\mathrm{PBH}}\sim 5\times 10^{13}\mathrm{g}-10^{17}\mathrm{g}$, there is a correlated signal in gravitational waves in the LISA, deci-Hz, and ground based regimes from $f_{\mathrm{GW}}\sim 10^{-3}\mathrm{Hz}-20\mathrm{Hz}$ and in the 21 cm global signal from $z\sim 300-30$. These observations are entirely independent of each other and within the reach of near-future experiments, making a combined measurement a novel multimessenger probe of primordial physics.

arXiv comment6 pages, 3 figures