NANOGrav Data Hints at Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter.

Abstract

The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently published strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process that may be interpreted as a stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a signal can be explained by second-order gravitational waves produced during the formation of primordial black holes from the collapse of sizeable scalar perturbations generated during inflation. This possibility has two predictions: (i)\xa0the primordial black holes may comprise the totality of the dark matter with the dominant contribution to their mass function falling in the range (10^{-15}÷10^{-11})M_{⊙} and (ii)\xa0the gravitational wave stochastic background will be seen as well by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna experiment.