New thresholds for primordial black hole formation during the QCD phase transition

Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) might have formed in the early Universe as a consequence of the collapse of density fluctuations with an amplitude above a critical value δc: the formation threshold. Although for a radiation-dominated Universe δc remains constant, if the Universe experiences some dust-like phases (e.g. phase transitions) δc might decrease, improving the chances of PBH formation. We studied the evolution of δc during the QCD phase transition epoch within three different models: Bag Model (BM), Lattice Fit Model (LFM), and Crossover Model (CM). We found that the reduction on the background value of δc can be as high as $77%$ (BM), which might imply a ~10⁻¹⁰ probability of PBHs forming at the QCD epoch.