Pulsar timing can constrain primordial black holes in the LIGO mass window

Abstract

The recent discovery of gravitational waves from merging black holes has generated interest in primordial black holes as a possible component of the dark matter. In this paper, we show that pulsar timing may soon have sufficient data to constrain $1$-$1000M_{\odot }$ primordial black holes via the non-detection of a third-order Shapiro time delay as the black holes move around the Galactic halo. We present the results of a Monte Carlo simulation which suggests that future data from known pulsars may be capable of constraining the PBH density more stringently than other existing methods in the mass range ~1-30$M_{\odot }$. We find that timing new pulsars discovered using the proposed Square Kilometre Array may constrain primordial black holes in this mass range to comprise less than ~1-10% of the dark matter.

Comments: 6 pages, 2 figures; published in PRD with minor revision (no changes to results)