Merger rates in primordial black hole clusters without initial binaries

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    Final published version, 3.15 MB, PDF document

  • Valeriya Korol
  • Ilya Mandel
  • M. Coleman Miller
  • Ross P. Church
  • Melvyn B. Davies

Primordial black holes formed through the collapse of cosmological density fluctuations have been hypothesized as contributors to the dark matter content of the Universe. At the same time, their mergers could contribute to the recently observed population of gravitational-wave sources. We investigate the scenario in which primordial black holes form binaries at late times in the Universe. Specifically, we re-examine the mergers of primordial black holes in small clusters of similar to 30 objects in the absence of initial binaries. Binaries form dynamically through Newtonian gravitational interactions. These binaries act as heat sources for the cluster, increasing the cluster's velocity dispersion, which inhibits direct mergers through gravitational-wave two-body captures. Meanwhile, three-body encounters of tight binaries are too rare to tighten binaries sufficiently to allow them to merge through gravitational-wave emission. We conclude that in the absence of initial binaries, merger rates of primordial black holes in the considered scenario are at least an order of magnitude lower than previously suggested, which makes gravitational-wave detections of such sources improbable.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume496
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)994-1000
Number of pages7
ISSN0035-8711
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

    Research areas

  • gravitational waves, cosmology: dark matter, black hole mergers, DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION, PERTURBATIONS

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