Speaker
Description
We show that a Primordial Black Hole interpretation of the S251112cm merger event is fully compatible with current observational constraints on their abundance.
The LVK merger event S251112cm points to at least one subsolar mass compact object, which is difficult to accommodate within standard stellar evolution and motivates the consideration of non-standard formation channels. Primordial Black Holes (PBH) -formed from the collapse of primordial density fluctuations in the early Universe- provide a well motivated candidate, with a mass spectrum not limited from stellar processes. Their abundance is constrained by a range of astrophysical and cosmological observations, with bounds that depend strongly on mass.
Within these constraints, we estimate the merger rate of PBHs in the mass range 0.1–1 solar masses, and combine it with LVK sensitivity to evaluate the probability that a sub-solar PBH merger produced the S251112cm event.
We find that this probability is sizable across the relevant mass range -reaching order 0.5 or larger- thus making a PBH interpretation of the event well-founded.
