Speaker
Jaume Garriga
Description
A class of inflationary scenarios for primordial black hole (PBH) formation include a small barrier in the slope of the potential, leading to local type non-Gaussianity. In such models, there are two competing channels for PBH formation. One is the standard collapse of adiabatic perturbations. Alternatively, PBH may form by the supercritical implosion, during the radiation era, of localized regions of trapped false vacuum. We analyze such models, comparing both channels and establishing under what conditions one will dominate over the other. More generally, we point out that the existence of alternative channels can be inferred from unitarity considerations.
