2024/10/06 by Frans van Die, I. D. Rapoport, van Die, Frans +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.04522
openalex publication_date 2024/10/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In multi-component dark matter models, a fraction fpbh of the dark matter could be in the form of primordial black holes (PBHs) with (sub)solar masses. Some would have formed binaries that presently trace the Milky Way halo of particle dark matter. We explore the gravitational wave (GW) signal produced by such a hypothetical population of Galactic PBH binaries and assess its detectability by the LISA experiment. For this purpose, we model the formation and evolution of early-type PBH binaries accounting for GW hardening and binary disruption in the Milky Way. Our analysis reveals that the present-day Galactic population of PBH binaries is characterized by very high orbital eccentricities |1-e|≪ 1. For a PBH mass M\rm pbh ∼ 0.1 - 1 M_\odot, this yields a GW background that peaks in the millihertz frequency range where the LISA instrumental noise is minimum. While this signal remains below the LISA detection threshold for viable fpbh\lesssim 0.01, future GW observatories such as DECIGO and BBO could detect it if 0.01\lesssim M\rm pbh \lesssim 0.1 M_\odot. Furthermore, we anticipate that, after 5 years of observations, LISA should be able to detect O(100) (resp. O(1)) loud Galactic PBH binaries of mass M\rm pbh ∼ 0.1 - 1 M_\odot with a SNR ≥ 5 if f\rm pbh=0.01 (resp. f\rm pbh=0.001). Nonlinear effects not considered here such as mass accretion and dynamical capture could alter these predictions.