New opportunities for primordial black holes across the scale
Benjamin Lehmann
UC Santa Cruz
A wide variety of physical mechanisms can result in the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the early universe. Such objects would provide exquisite probes of cosmology and new physics at otherwise inaccessible scales, and could constitute all of cosmological dark matter. Recent developments in experimental techniques and astronomical observables have opened several novel avenues for the discovery of PBHs. I will detail promising new opportunities to probe PBHs from thousands of solar masses all the way to the Planck scale, emphasizing two cases: near-solar-mass black holes and microscopic black hole relics. Each of these presents an accessible smoking-gun signature—and in the latter case, we may even have the opportunity to literally study black holes in the laboratory.
All interested persons are invited to attend remotely—email physics@nd.edu for information.