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- Microlensing constraints on clustered primordial black holes doi link

Auteur(s): Petac M.(Corresp.), Lavalle J.(Corresp.), Jedamzik K.

(Article) Publié: Physical Review D, vol. 105 p.083520 (2022)
Texte intégral en Openaccess : arXiv


Ref Arxiv: 2201.02521
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.105.083520
Ref. & Cit.: NASA ADS
Résumé:

The discovery of black-hole-binary mergers through their gravitational wave (GW) emission has reopened the exciting possibility that dark matter is made, at least partly, of primordial black holes (PBHs). However, this scenario is challenged by many observational probes that set bounds on the relative PBH abundance across a broad range of viable PBH masses. Among these bounds, the ones coming from microlensing surveys are particularly severe in the mass range from $\sim 10^{-10}$ to a few M$_{\odot}$. The upper part of this range precisely corresponds to the mass window inside which the formation of PBHs should be boosted due to the QCD phase transition in the early Universe, which makes the microlensing probes particularly important. However, it has been argued that taking into account the inevitable clustering of PBH on small scales can significantly relax or entirely remove these bounds. While the impact of PBH clustering on the GW event rate has been studied in detail, its impact on the microlensing event rate has not yet been fully assessed. In this Letter, we address this issue, and show that clusters arising from PBH formed from Gaussian initial curvature perturbations do not alter the current microlensing constraints, as they are not sufficiently dense nor massive.



Commentaires: 9 pages, 1 figure. Comments are welcome!