Constraints on planetary and asteroid-mass primordial black holes from continuous gravitational-wave searches
Abstract
We present new constraints on the merging rates of planetary-mass and asteroid-mass primordial black hole binaries using limits on continuous waves (quasimonochromatic, quasi-infinite duration signals) derived from an all-sky search for isolated compact objects in the first six months of the third observing run (O3a) of LIGO/Virgo. We calculate the merging rates of these binaries in a model-independent way, and convert them to constraints on the primordial black hole abundance with minimal modeling assumptions. Our results show that all-sky searches are sensitive to sources at most O (10 pc ) away for systems with chirp masses of O (10-5 M⊙) at gravitational-wave frequencies around 30 Hz-40 Hz. These results also show that continuous-wave searches could in the future directly probe the existence of planetary-mass and asteroid-mass primordial black holes, especially those in binaries with asymmetric mass ratios. Furthermore, they demonstrate that new methods accounting for the full nonlinear gravitational-wave frequency evolution are needed to improve constraints on primordial black holes.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- March 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.105.062008
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2110.06188
- Bibcode:
- 2022PhRvD.105f2008M
- Keywords:
-
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 8 pages, 4 figures