Black holes from cosmic inflation

Alexander Vilenkin (Tufts)

September 09, 2019

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Abstract: High-energy vacuum bubbles can spontaneously nucleate and expand during the inflationary epoch in the early universe. After inflation ends, the bubbles form black holes (BH) with a wide spectrum of masses. This mechanism of BH formation may account for supermassive BH observed at galactic centers and for the BH mergers observed by LIGO. Other observational effects include early formation of massive halos and a spiky distribution of spectral distortions of the CMB. This scenario also has interesting implications for the global structure of the universe.