Gravitational wave researchers Dr. Miller, Dr. Aggarwal, et al. from, among others, Nikhef have found no evidence of earth-mass black holes that could have formed within a few picoseconds of the Big Bang. They used data from the first half of the third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration to reach this conclusion.
For decades, these ‘primordial’ black holes have been proposed as explanations for the mysterious dark matter in the universe. One way to investigate the existence of primordial black holes is by measuring gravitational waves, tiny ripples in spacetime, that could be emitted if these black holes form in a binary system and slowly inspiral towards one another.
After analyzing the LIGO data, no such detection has been made, and this has allowed the researchers to obtain an upper limit on the number of such systems that could have formed in our galaxy (and the maximum fraction of dark matter that earth-mass black holes could consist of). These findings bring researchers one step closer to understanding the enigmatic origin of dark matter.
This is the conclusion of a new study published on 18 July in Physical Review Letters.
Virgo is part of the international LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration, which has two detectors in the US, one in Italy and an underground facility in Japan. Nikhef is one of the main partners in Virgo, making important contributions to it, and is heavily involved in the data analyses of the LVK observations.
