The clustering of massive Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Measuring their mass distribution with advanced LIGO

Sébastien Clesse, Juan García-Bellido

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The recent detection by Advanced LIGO of gravitational waves (GW) from the merging of a binary black hole system sets new limits on the merging rates of massive primordial black holes (PBH) that could be a significant fraction or even the totality of the dark matter in the Universe. aLIGO opens the way to the determination of the distribution and clustering of such massive PBH. If PBH clusters have a similar density to the one observed in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, we find merging rates comparable to aLIGO expectations. Massive PBH dark matter predicts the existence of thousands of those dwarf galaxies where star formation is unlikely because of gas accretion onto PBH, which would possibly provide a solution to the missing satellite and too-big-to-fail problems. Finally, we study the possibility of using aLIGO and future GW antennas to measure the abundance and mass distribution of PBH in the range [5–200] M to 10% accuracy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)142-147
Number of pages6
JournalPhysics of the Dark Universe
Volume15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Dark matter
  • Gravitational waves
  • Primordial black holes

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