Primordial black holes as a novel probe of primordial gravitational waves. II. Detailed analysis

Abstract

Recently we have proposed a novel method to probe primordial gravitational waves from upper bounds on the abundance of primordial black holes (PBHs). When the amplitude of primordial tensor perturbations generated in the early Universe is fairly large, they induce substantial scalar perturbations due to their second-order effects. If these induced scalar perturbations are too large when they reenter the horizon, then PBHs are overproduced, their abundance exceeding observational upper limits. That is, primordial tensor perturbations on superhorizon scales can be constrained from the absence of PBHs. In our recent paper we have only shown simple estimations of these new constraints, and hence in this paper, we present detailed derivations, solving the Einstein equations for scalar perturbations induced at second order in tensor perturbations. We also derive an approximate formula for the probability density function of induced density perturbations, necessary to relate the abundance of PBHs to the primordial tensor power spectrum, assuming primordial tensor perturbations follow Gaussian distributions. Our new upper bounds from PBHs are compared with other existing bounds obtained from big bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, LIGO/Virgo and pulsar timing arrays.