- Accepted Paper
Primordial black holes from vector-induced curvature perturbations sourced by primordial magnetic fields
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 29 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/116k-pq87
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 29 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/116k-pq87
Generating an appreciable abundance of primordial black holes (PBHs) requires a substantial enhancement of primordial curvature perturbations on small scales. In this Letter, we propose a new post-inflationary mechanism in which such an enhancement arises during a stiff, or kination, epoch. The mechanism is driven by metric vector perturbations sourced by the vector component of the electromagnetic stress-energy tensor associated with primordial magnetic fields (PMFs). Since these first-order vector modes remain approximately constant during kination, they act as persistent nonlinear sources for second-order scalar perturbations. We show that the resulting vector-induced curvature perturbations are amplified toward the infrared cutoff of the kination band and exhibit the characteristic scaling PR(k) k^{-5}. As a concrete realization, we consider PMFs generated in a Ratra-type magnetogenesis scenario and find that the induced curvature perturbations can produce PBHs with an abundance large enough to constitute a substantial fraction of the dark matter.
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