2017/02/28 by Juan Garcia-Bellido, J. García-Bellido, E. Ruiz Morales +1 · 20 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curvature #Dark matter #Field (mathematics) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitational wave #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflaton #Inflection point #Physics #Primordial black hole #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Spectral density #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.dark.2017.09.007
published as Physics Dark Universe 18 (2017) 47-54 · 13 pages, 6 figures. Matches version published in PDU
openalex publication_date 2017/09/28 · arxiv created 2017/11/29 · arxiv updated 2017/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Primordial black holes (PBH) have been shown to arise from high peaks in the matter power spectra of multi-field models of inflation. Here we show, with a simple toy model, that it is also possible to generate a peak in the curvature power spectrum of single-field inflation. We assume that the effective dynamics of the inflaton field presents a near-inflection point which slows down the field right before the end of inflation and gives rise to a prominent spike in the fluctuation power spectrum at scales much smaller than those probed by Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS) observations. This peak will give rise, upon reentry during the radiation era, to PBH via gravitational collapse. The mass and abundance of these PBH is such that they could constitute the totality of the Dark Matter today. We satisfy all CMB and LSS constraints and predict a very broad range of PBH masses. Some of these PBH are light enough that they will evaporate before structure formation, leaving behind a large curvature fluctuation on small scales. This broad mass distribution of PBH as Dark Matter will be tested in the future by AdvLIGO and LISA interferometers.