Abstract
A universal mechanism may be responsible for several unresolved cosmic
conundra. The sudden drop in the pressure of relativistic matter at $W^\pm /
Z^0$ decoupling, the quark-hadron transition and $e^+e^-$ annihilation
enhances the probability of primordial black hole (PBH) formation in the early
Universe. Assuming the amplitude of the primordial curvature fluctuations is
approximately scale-invariant, this implies a multi-modal PBH mass spectrum
with peaks at $10^-6$, $1$, $30$, and $10^6\,M_ødot$. This suggests a
unified PBH scenario which naturally explains the dark matter and recent
microlensing observations, the LIGO/Virgo black hole mergers, the correlations
in the cosmic infrared and X-ray backgrounds, and the origin of the
supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei at high redshift. A distinct
prediction of our model is that LIGO/Virgo should soon observe the merging of
black holes with masses between $2$ and $5\,M_ødot$ or above $70\,M_ødot$
and with low mass ratios.
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