Primordial Black Holes with QCD Color Charge

Understand

We describe a realistic mechanism whereby black holes with significant QCD color charge could have formed during the early universe.

• Primordial black holes (PBHs) could make up a significant fraction of the dark matter if they formed well before the QCD confinement transition.
• Such PBHs would form by absorbing unconfined quarks and gluons, and hence could acquire a net color charge.
• We estimate the number of PBHs per Hubble volume with near-extremal color charge for various scenarios, and discuss possible phenomenological implications.