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arXiv · 1710.06945

Limits on primordial black holes from $\mu$ distortions in cosmic microwave background

Tomohiro Nakama·Bernard Carr·Joseph Silk
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Abstract

If primordial black holes (PBHs) form directly from inhomogeneities in the early Universe, then the number in the mass range $10^5 -10^{12}M_{\odot}$ is severely constrained by upper limits to the $\mu$ distortion in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This is because inhomogeneities on these scales will be dissipated by Silk damping in the redshift interval $5\times 10^4\lesssim z\lesssim2\times 10^6$. If the primordial fluctuations on a given mass scale have a Gaussian distribution and PBHs form on the high-$\sigma$ tail, as in the simplest scenarios, then the $\mu$ constraints exclude PBHs in this mass range from playing any interesting cosmological role. Only if the fluctuations are highly non-Gaussian, or form through some mechanism unrelated to the primordial fluctuations, can this conclusion be obviated.

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Tomohiro Nakama, Bernard Carr, Joseph Silk. 2017-10-18. Limits on primordial black holes from $\mu$ distortions in cosmic microwave background. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.97.043525

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