Distinct signatures of spinning PBH domination and evaporation: doubly peaked gravitational waves, dark relics and CMB complementarity

Ultra-low mass primordial black holes (PBH), which may briefly dominate the energy density of the universe but completely evaporate before the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), can lead to interesting observable signatures. In our previous work, we studied the generation of a doubly peaked spectrum of induced stochastic gravitational wave background (ISGWB) for such a scenario and explored the possibility of probing a class of baryogenesis models wherein the emission of massive unstable particles from the PBH evaporation and their subsequent decay contributes to the matter-antimatter asymmetry. In this work, we extend the scope of our earlier work by including spinning PBHs and consider the emission of light relativistic dark sector particles, which contribute to the dark radiation (DR) and massive stable dark sector particles, thereby accounting for the dark matter (DM) component of the universe. The ISGWB can probe the non-thermal production of these heavy DM particles, which cannot be accessible in laboratory searches. For the case of DR, we find a novel complementarity between the measurements of increment N-eff from these emitted particles and the ISGWB from PBH domination. Our results indicate that the ISGWB has a weak dependence on the initial PBH spin. However, for gravitons as the DR particles, the initial PBH spin plays a significant role, and only above a critical value of the initial spin parameter a(*), which depends only on initial PBH mass, the graviton emission can be probed in the CMB-HD experiment. Upcoming CMB experiments such as CMB-HD and CMB-Bharat, together with future GW detectors like LISA and ET, open up an exciting possibility of constraining the PBHs parameter space providing deeper insights into the expansion history of the universe between the end of inflation and BBN.

Automated summary

This study explores the effects of dark energy and dark matter on the evolution of the universe by considering spinning primordial black holes (PBH) and the emission of light relativistic and massive stable dark sector particles. The results show that the induced stochastic gravitational wave background (ISGWB) and the increment of N-eff from PBH domination can complement each other and be used to study the non-thermal production of dark matter. Furthermore, future astrophysical observations like CMB-HD and LISA can provide deeper insights into the expansion history of the universe.