Primordial Black Holes - Recent Developments

Abstract

Recent developments in the study of primordial black holes (PBHs) will be reviewed, with particular emphasis on their formation and evaporation. PBHs could provide a unique probe of the early Universe, gravitational collapse, high energy physics and quantum gravity. Indeed their study may place interesting constraints on the physics relevant to these areas even if they never formed. In the "early Universe" context, particularly useful constraints can be placed on inflationary scenarios, especially if evaporating PBHs leave stable Planck-mass relicts. In the "gravitational collapse" context, the existence of PBHs could provide a unique test of the sort of critical phenomena discovered in recent numerical calculations. In the "high energy physics" context, information may come from gamma-ray bursts (if a subset of these are generated by PBH explosions) or from cosmic rays (if some of these derive from evaporating PBHs). In the "quantum gravity" context, the formation and evaporation of small black holes could lead to observable signatures in cosmic ray events and accelerator experiments, providing there are extra dimensions and providing the quantum gravity scale is around a TeV.

arXiv comment12 pages, 6 figures, 22nd Texas Symposium at Stanford 12-17 December 2004

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• Primordial black hole formation with full numerical relativity
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• Density Perturbations in Hybrid Inflation Using a Free Field Theory Time-Delay Approach
• Primordial black holes in a dimensionally oxidizing Universe
• A hierarchy of cosmic compact objects - without black holes
• Astrophysical black holes