Primordial black holes as dark matter and generators of cosmic structure

Understand

Primordial black holes (PBHs) could provide the dark matter but a variety of constraints restrict the possible mass windows to $10^{16} - 10^{17}$g, $10^{20} - 10^{24}$g and $10 - 10^3M_{\odot}$.

• The last possibility is of special interest in view of the recent detection of black-hole mergers by LIGO.
• PBHs larger than $10^3 M_{\odot}$ might have important cosmological consequences even if they have only a small fraction of the dark matter density.
• In particular, they could generate cosmological structures either individually through the "seed" effect or collectively through the "Poisson" effect, thereby alleviating some problems associated with the standard cold dark matter scenario.