Primordial Black Holes from Slow Phase Transitions with Delayed Reheating: A Peak-Theory Approach

Abstract

We study the possibility of significant PBH production from a slow first-order phase transition with delayed reheating. Since delayed reheating results in an early matter-dominated phase between percolation and reheating, we developed a peak-theoretic approach to PBH formation during this phase based on the non-Gaussian distribution of overdensity arising from the transition. To obtain the collapse probability, we performed large-scale Monte Carlo simulations and employed the hoop-conjecture criterion. We include tidal-torque terms to investigate the initial spin of the PBHs and find that the average spin parameter is $\mathcal{O}(10^{-3})$. Furthermore, we obtain an emergent overdensity threshold for collapse that depends on the phase transition properties and reheating efficiency. We find that the resulting PBH abundance is extremely sensitive to the reheating efficiency, with order-unity changes in efficiency leading to variations of many orders of magnitude in the collapse fraction. We identify regions of parameter space where the resulting PBHs can account for the entirety of the dark matter abundance. Finally, we also constrain the phase transition and reheating properties from current data on (non-)observations of PBHs.