Primordial black holes as a dark matter candidate - a brief overview

Abstract

Historically the most popular dark matter candidates have been new elementary particles, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles and axions. However Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), black holes formed from overdensities in the early Universe, are another possibility. The discovery of gravitational waves from mergers of tens of Solar mass black hole binaries by LIGO-Virgo has generated a surge in interest in PBH dark matter. We overview the formation of PBHs, observational probes of their abundance, and some of the key open questions in the field.