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Murgia R, Scelfo G, Viel M, et al. Lyman-α Forest Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter. Phys Rev Lett. 2019;123(7):071102doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102.
Murgia, R., Scelfo, G., Viel, M., & Raccanelli, A. (2019). Lyman-α Forest Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter. Physical review letters, 123(7), 071102. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102
Murgia, Riccardo, et al. "Lyman-α Forest Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter." Physical review letters vol. 123,7 (2019): 071102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102
Murgia R, Scelfo G, Viel M, Raccanelli A. Lyman-α Forest Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter. Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Aug 16;123(7):071102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102. PMID: 31491102.
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Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Aug 16;123(7):071102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102.

Lyman-α Forest Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter.

Physical review letters

Riccardo Murgia, Giulio Scelfo, Matteo Viel, Alvise Raccanelli

Affiliations

  1. SISSA, Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
  2. INFN, Sez. di Trieste, via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy.
  3. IFPU, Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, via Beirut 2, 34151 Trieste, Italy.
  4. INAF/OATS, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via Tiepolo 11, I-34143 Trieste, Italy.
  5. Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1 Esplanade des Particules, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland.

PMID: 31491102 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.071102

Abstract

The renewed interest in the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) may constitute a significant part of dark matter has provided motivation for revisiting old observational constraints, as well as developing new ones. We present new limits on the PBH abundance, from a comprehensive analysis of high-resolution high-redshift Lyman-α forest data. Poisson fluctuations in the PBH number density induce a small-scale power enhancement which departs from the standard cold dark matter prediction. Using a grid of hydrodynamic simulations exploring different values of astrophysical parameters, we obtain a marginalized upper limit on the PBH mass of f_{PBH}M_{PBH}∼60M_{⊙} at 2σ, when a Gaussian prior on the reionization redshift is imposed, preventing its posterior distribution from peaking on very high values, which are disfavored by the most recent estimates obtained both through cosmic microwave background and intergalactic medium observations. Such a bound weakens to f_{PBH}M_{PBH}∼170M_{⊙} when a conservative flat prior is instead assumed. Both limits significantly improve on previous constraints from the same physical observable. We also extend our predictions to nonmonochromatic PBH mass distributions, ruling out large regions of the parameter space for some of the most viable PBH extended mass functions.

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