Simulations of Ellipsoidal Primordial Black Hole Formation

Abstract: We perform $3+1$ relativistic numerical simulations to study primordial black hole (PBH) formation from the collapse of adiabatic super-horizon non-spherical perturbations generated from curvature fluctuations obeying random Gaussian statistics with a monochromatic power spectrum. The matter field is assumed to be a perfect fluid of an equation of state $w:=P/\rho={\rm const.}$ with $P$ and $\rho$ being the pressure and the energy density, respectively. The initial spatial profile of the curvature perturbation is modeled with the amplitude $\mu$ and non-spherical parameters $e$ (ellipticity) and $p$ (prolateness) according to peak theory. We focus on the dynamics and the threshold for PBH formation in terms of the non-spherical parameters $e$ and $p$. We find that the critical values ($e_c, p_c$) with a fixed value of $\mu$ closely follow a superellipse curve. With $p=0$, for the range of amplitudes considered, we find that the critical ellipticity for non-spherical collapse follows a decaying power law as a function of $(\mu-\mu_{\rm c,sp})$ with $\mu_{\rm c,sp}$ being the threshold for the spherical case. Our results also indicate that, for both cases of $w = 1/3$ and $w = 1/10$, small deviations from sphericity can avoid collapsing to a black hole when the amplitude is near its critical threshold. Finally we discuss the significance of the ellipticity on the rate of the PBH production.