A Robust Test of the Existence of Primordial Black Holes in Galactic Dark Matter Halos

Abstract

If very low mass primordial black holes (PBH) within the asteroid/moon-mass range indeed reside in galactic dark matter halos, they must necessarily collide with galactic neutron stars (NSs). These collisions must, again necessarily, form light black holes (LBHs) with masses of typical NSs, M LBH ≈ 1–2 M ⊙. LBHs may be behind events already detected by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors (GW170817, GW190425, and others such as a mixed stellar black hole–NS-mass event GW191219_163120), and most recently by microlensing (OGLE-BLG-2011-0462). Although the status of these observations as containing LBHs is not confirmed, there is no question that gravitational-wave detectors and microlensing are in principle and in practice capable of detecting LBHs. We have calculated the creation rate of LBHs resulting from these light primordial black hole (PBH) collisions with NSs. On this basis, we claim that if improved gravitational-wave detectors and microlensing statistics of the LBH events would indicate that the number of LBHs is significantly lower that what follows from the calculated creation rate, then this would be an unambiguous proof that there is no significant light PBH contribution to the galactic dark matter halos. Otherwise, if observed and calculated numbers of LBHs roughly agree, then the hypothesis of primordial black hole existence gets strong observational support, and in addition their collisions with NSs may be considered a natural creation channel for the LBHs, solving the problem of their origin, as it is known that they cannot be a product of standard stellar evolution.