Establishing the Non-Primordial Origin of Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers

Understand

Primordial black holes (PBHs) from the early Universe constitute an attractive dark matter candidate.

• First detections of black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) candidate gravitational wave events by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration, GW200105 and GW200115, already prompted speculations about non-astrophysical origin.
• We analyze, for the first time, the total volumetric merger rates of PBH-NS binaries formed via two-body gravitational scattering, finding them to be subdominant to the astrophysical BH-NS rates.
• In contrast to binary black holes, a significant fraction of which can be of primordial origin, either formed in dark matter halos or in the early Universe, PBH-NS rates cannot be significantly enhanced by contributions preceding star formation.