Primordial black holes formed in the early Universe via gravitational collapse of over-dense regions may contribute a significant amount to the present dark matter relic density. Inflation provides a natural framework for the production mechanism of primordial black holes. For example, single field inflation models with a fine-tuned scalar potential may exhibit a period of ultra-slow roll, during which the curvature perturbation may be enhanced to become seeds of the primordial black holes formed as the corresponding scales reenter the horizon. In this work, we propose an alternative mechanism for the primordial black hole formation. We consider a model in which a scalar field is coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet term and show that primordial black holes may be seeded when a scalar potential term and the Gauss-Bonnet coupling term are nearly balanced. Large curvature perturbation in this model not only leads to the production of primordial black holes, but it also sources gravitational waves at the second order. We calculate the present density parameter of the gravitational waves and discuss the detectability of the signals by comparing them with sensitivity bounds of future gravitational wave experiments.

• Received 11 August 2021
• Accepted 24 September 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.083545

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society