Primordial Black Holes as a dark matter candidate

Pacific
Speaker(s) Anne Green (University of Nottingham, UK)
Video
Description

Please contact erule@berkeley.edu for zoom links.

Historically the most popular dark matter candidates have been new elementary particles, such as WIMPs and axions. However Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), black holes formed from over-densities in the early Universe, are another possibility. The discovery of gravitational waves from mergers of ~10 Solar mass black hole binaries by LIGO-Virgo has generated a surge in interest in PBH dark matter. I will overview the formation of PBHs, observational probes of their abundance and the key open questions in the field.