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On the Primordial Binary Black Hole Mergings in LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Data

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Abstract

We briefly discuss a possible cosmological implication of the observed binary black hole mergings detected by LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration (GWTC-3 catalogue) for the primordial black hole (PBH) formation in the early Universe. We show that the bumpy chirp mass distribution of the LVK BH + BH binaries can be fit with two distinct and almost equal populations: (1) astrophysical mergings from BH + BH formed in the modern Universe from evolution of massive binaries and (2) mergings of binary PBHs with initial log-normal mass distribution. We find that the PBH central mass (\({{M}_{c}} \simeq 30{{M}_{ \odot }}\)) and distribution width derived from the observed LVK chirp masses are almost insensitive to the assumed double PBH formation model. To comply with the observed LVK BH + BH merging rate, the CDM PBH mass fraction should be \({{f}_{{{\text{pbh}}}}} \sim {{10}^{{ - 3}}}\) but can be higher if PBH clustering is taken into account.

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Notes

  1. Chirp-mass in the observer’s frame is determined by measuring signal frequency during the inspiraling along quasi-Keplerian orbits before merging and is degenerate by source redshift \(z\) \({{\mathcal{M}}_{{\det }}} = (1 + z)\mathcal{M}\).

  2. After the mass renormalization \({{M}_{0}} = {{M}_{c}}\exp [{{ - 1} \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{ - 1} {(2\gamma )}}} \right. \kern-0em} {(2\gamma )}}]\) the PBH mass distribution can be written as F(m) = \(\sqrt {\frac{\gamma }{\pi }} \frac{1}{m}\exp \left[ { - \gamma {{{\ln }}^{2}}\left( {\frac{m}{{{{M}_{c}}}}} \right)} \right]\) such that \(\int F(m)dm = 1\) (\(\gamma = {1 \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {1 {2{{\sigma }^{2}}}}} \right. \kern-0em} {2{{\sigma }^{2}}}}\) turns this expression into the standard log-normal form).

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank A.D. Dolgov for discussions. The authors acknowledge the support from the Russian Science Foundation grant 23-42-00055.

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  1. Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, 119234, Moscow, Russia

    K. A. Postnov & N. A. Mitichkin

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Postnov, K.A., Mitichkin, N.A. On the Primordial Binary Black Hole Mergings in LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Data. Phys. Part. Nuclei 54, 884–888 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063779623050192

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