Speaker
Andrew Miller
(Nikhef / Utrecht University)
Description
Gravitational waves can probe the existence of primordial black holes (PBHs). If PBHs form in binary systems, they will inspiral and eventually merge, just as stellar-mass black holes do, emitting gravitational waves in the process. Here, we describe multiple methods to probe the existence of planetary-mass PBHs, and focus on one, the generalized frequency-Hough, that we used to run a search for such objects in O3a LIGO data. While we did not find any viable PBH candidates, we set, for the first time, stringent upper limits on planetary-mass PBHs in equal-mass and asymmetric mass ratio binary systems using gravitational-wave data. We also comment on the future of searches for PBHs with continuous gravitational-wave methods.
Primary authors
Andrew Miller
(Nikhef / Utrecht University)
Prof.
Nancy Aggarwal
(UCDavis)
Federico De Lillo
(Université catholique de Louvain)
