Speaker
Description
Primordial black holes (PBHs), assumed to form in the early Universe, remain a viable dark matter candidate. Since dark matter is expected to be concentrated toward galactic centres, a significant population of PBHs would reside near a supermassive black hole (SMBH), creating a promising environment for gravitational wave emission. We consider a population of PBHs with masses in the range $10^{-15} - 10 \, \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ on hyperbolic trajectories near a SMBH, producing bursts of gravitational radiation during periastron passage. We focus on Sagittarius A* due to its proximity, and also consider M87*, with results that generalise to other scenarios. We compute the density of PBHs required to give rise to a popcorn gravitational wave background within the sensitivity range of future space-based detectors, including LISA and the proposed next generation $\mu$Ares detector.
| Research Area | Gravitational waves: black holes |
|---|