Do we need fine-tuning to create primordial black holes?

Abstract

Recently, the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) from the collapse of primordial fluctuations has received much attention. The abundance of PBHs formed during radiation domination is sensitive to the tail of the probability distribution of primordial fluctuations. We quantify the level of fine-tuning due to this sensitivity. For example, if the main source of dark matter is PBHs with mass $10^{-12}M_\odot$, then anthropic reasoning suggests that the dark matter to baryon ratio should range between 1 and 300. For this to happen, the root-mean-square amplitude of the curvature perturbation has to be fine-tuned within a $7.1\%$ range. As another example, if the recently detected gravitational-wave events are to be explained by PBHs, the corresponding degree of fine-tuning is $3.8\%$. We also find, however, that these fine-tunings can be relaxed if the primordial fluctuations are highly non-Gaussian, or if the PBHs are formed during an early-matter-dominated phase. We also note that no fine-tuning is needed for the scenario of a reheating of the universe by evaporated PBHs with Planck-mass relics left to serve as dark matter.