Primordial black holes from strong first-order phase transitions

Abstract

We study the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) in strongly super-cooled first-order phase transitions. The mechanism is based on the presence of remnants dominated by the false vacuum that scale slower with the expansion of the Universe than their surroundings where this energy was already converted into radiation. We compute the PBH formation from these remnants including the contribution from the false vacuum and the bubble walls, by estimating the collapse using the hoop conjecture and by considering both regions collapsing immediately when entering the horizon and sub-horizon regions that collapse as their compactness grows. We show that for exponential bubble nucleation rate, Γ ∝ eβt, the primordial black hole formation implies β/H ≳ 3.8, where H denotes the Hubble rate, if the potential energy of the false vacuum is ∆V ≲ (1012 GeV)4, as otherwise a too large abundance of long-lived PBHs forms. The observed dark matter abundance can be formed in asteroid mass PBHs if β/H ≃ 3.8 and 105 GeV ≲ ∆V1/4 ≲ 108 GeV. Finally, we consider also the effect of the second order correction to the exponential nucleation rate showing that the PBH abundance is mainly determined by the average radius of the true vacuum bubbles.