Abstract
The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently published strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process that may be interpreted as a stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a signal can be explained by second-order gravitational waves produced during the formation of primordial black holes from the collapse of sizeable scalar perturbations generated during inflation. This possibility has two predictions: (i) the primordial black holes may comprise the totality of the dark matter with the dominant contribution to their mass function falling in the range and (ii) the gravitational wave stochastic background will be seen as well by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna experiment.
- Received 18 September 2020
- Accepted 23 November 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.041303
© 2021 American Physical Society
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