Dartmouth Events

Abstract: Primordial black holes (PBHs) were first postulated more than half a century ago, and they remain a fascinating theoretical curiosity. In recent years, many researchers have realized that PBHs provide an exciting prospect for accounting for dark matter. Rather than requiring some as-yet unknown elementary particles beyond the Standard Model, or modified gravitational dynamics, dark matter might consist of a large population of PBHs that formed very early in cosmic history. In this talk I will review production mechanisms that could yield PBHs as well as present observational constraints. I will also describe recent models that predict an appropriate population of PBHs for dark matter while remaining consistent with the latest high-precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation.