How tightly can PBH abundance information constrain scalar-induced gravitational waves?

Abstract

Primordial black hole (PBH) abundances and scalar-induced gravitational waves (SIGWs) probe the same primordial fluctuations through different physical weights. We examine the predictive power of precise synthetic information on absolute PBH abundances over a finite stellar-mass interval, together with an exact total abundance and external population bounds. For Gaussian perturbations under a fixed quantum chromodynamics (QCD) formation prescription, two smooth, symmetric lognormal spectra satisfy the same abundance conditions while producing nonproportional leading-order SIGW spectra. The two spectra differ by about 20% when averaged over the lower of two adjacent nanohertz windows but by nearly a factor of 60 in the higher-frequency window, so the difference cannot be represented by a single rescaling of the gravitational-wave background. Peak position and width compensate with amplitude in the abundance calculation, while the higher-frequency window draws almost all its energy from scalar-mode pairs with both wavenumbers above the primordial peak. Under the principal abundance benchmark, local finite-width components yield larger contrasts at a fixed nanohertz frequency through distinct mode couplings under both the QCD and stochastic peak-curvature formation prescriptions. For a separately generated population, extending mass information over most of its abundance restricts the lognormal peak-position and width compensation and reduces the higher-window contrast, while the unequal window responses persist. These results show why joint PBH-SIGW inference must propagate primordial shapes compatible with the PBH abundance information rather than assign one tensor template to a single abundance fit.