Primordial Black Hole Production in Natural and Hilltop Inflation (2209.05674v2)

Abstract: We consider the possibility of primordial black hole, PBH, formation sourced by a rise in the power spectrum. The power spectrum becomes large at late times due to decay of the inflaton into vectors through a $\phi F \tilde{F}$ coupling. Two background inflaton models which are well supported by current Planck data are considered, natural inflation and hilltop inflation. Many of the papers considering formation of PBHs have considered a peaked power spectrum where $P_{\zeta}$ gets small again at late times. This avoids overproducing miniature PBHs which would evaporate and could violate BBN and CMB bounds. This paper examines the other way of avoiding these bounds, producing PBHs from perturbations formed closer to the end of inflation such that the PBHs are too small to violate these bounds. This has the advantage of allowing for simpler models in that no additional feature is needed to be added to evade constraints. Although these black holes would have evaporated, they can be close to without exceeding current BBN bounds, making it possible the signature will be revealed in the future. We calculate how the various model parameters affect the mass and number of PBHs produced. Any evidence for PBHs sourced from an inflationary power spectrum would provide evidence for inflation on a drastically different energy scale from the CMB, and thus would be highly valuable in answering what occurred during inflation.