Primordial black holes dark matter from inflection point models of inflation and the effects of reheating

Abstract

We study the generation of primordial black holes (PBH) in a single field inflection point model of inflation wherein the effective potential is expanded up to the sextic order and the inversion symmetry is imposed such that only even powers are retained in the potential. By working with a quasi-inflection point, we find that PBHs can be produced in our scenario in a very relevant mass range with a nearly monochromatic mass fraction which can account for a sizeable fraction of the cold dark matter in the universe. With changing various parameters in our model, we can also generate PBHs in a higher mass range but the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations becomes strongly tilted at the CMB scales. We briefly discuss already existing difficulties and uncertainties associated with the computation of the PBH mass fraction for a given inflationary model. Moreover, we study the effects of a reheating epoch after the end of inflation on the PBH mass fraction and find that an epoch of a matter dominated reheating can shift the mass fraction to a larger mass range as well as increase their fractional contribution to the total dark matter even for the case of a monochromatic mass fraction.