Primordial Black Hole Ringdown: the Irreducible Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background

Abstract: Independently from the formation mechanism of primordial black holes in the early universe, their generation is accompanied by a ringdown phase during which they relax to a stationary configuration and gravitational waves under the form of quasinormal modes are emitted. Such gravitational waves generate an irreducible and unavoidable stochastic background which is testable by current and future experiments. In particular, the presence of a primordial black hole ringdown allows to significantly constrain the idea of extremely supermassive black holes to comprise the entire dark matter of the universe.