2017/10/31 by Heling Deng, Alexander Vilenkin · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Bubble #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitational wave #Hawking radiation #LIGO #Mechanics #Micro black hole #Physics #Primordial black hole #Sonic black hole #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2017/12/044
39 pages, 12 figures
openalex publication_date 2017/12/28 · arxiv created 2018/03/10 · arxiv updated 2018/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Vacuum bubbles may nucleate during the inflationary epoch and expand, reaching relativistic speeds. After inflation ends, the bubbles are quickly slowed down, transferring their momentum to a shock wave that propagates outwards in the radiation background. The ultimate fate of the bubble depends on its size. Bubbles smaller than certain critical size collapse to ordinary black holes, while in the supercritical case the bubble interior inflates, forming a baby universe, which is connected to the exterior region by a wormhole. The wormhole then closes up, turning into two black holes at its two mouths. We use numerical simulations to find the masses of black holes formed in this scenario, both in subcritical and supercritical regime. The resulting mass spectrum is extremely broad, ranging over many orders of magnitude. For some parameter values, these black holes can serve as seeds for supermassive black holes and may account for LIGO observations.