Observational Evidence for Cosmological Coupling of Black Holes and its Implications for an Astrophysical Source of Dark Energy

Abstract

Observations have found black holes spanning 10 orders of magnitude in mass across most of cosmic history. The Kerr black hole solution is, however, provisional as its behavior at infinity is incompatible with an expanding universe. Black hole models with realistic behavior at infinity predict that the gravitating mass of a black hole can increase with the expansion of the universe independently of accretion or mergers, in a manner that depends on the black hole’s interior solution. We test this prediction by considering the growth of supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies over 0 < z ≲ 2.5. We find evidence for cosmologically coupled mass growth among these black holes, with zero cosmological coupling excluded at 99.98% confidence. The redshift dependence of the mass growth implies that, at z ≲ 7, black holes contribute an effectively constant cosmological energy density to Friedmann’s equations. The continuity equation then requires that black holes contribute cosmologically as vacuum energy. We further show that black hole production from the cosmic star formation history gives the value of ΩΛ measured by Planck while being consistent with constraints from massive compact halo objects. We thus propose that stellar remnant black holes are the astrophysical origin of dark energy, explaining the onset of accelerating expansion at z ∼ 0.7.

Gravitational Vacuum Condensate Stars

“…The solution ( 93)-( 94) is such that the discontinuities of two quantities which appear in (88) and the surface stress-energy tensor (91) are…”

“…This bound also disappears if the assumption upon which it is based is relaxed, as it almost certainly should be. A possibility that the dark energy hidden inside of the population of QBHs may be cosmologically coupled, if these QBHs are all gravastars has been considered recently in [88].…”

Yeah or Nay on Black Holes as Explanation for Dark Energy?

“…And it is, to the extent that we have still have no conventional 2 idea to suitably explain its existence, although many different candidate explanations have been proposed. [9,10] are two recent papers who started a recent popular interest on the idea that black holes may be behind dark energy and the accelerated expansion of the universe [11][12][13]. Some physicists have provided their views on the matter [23,124], but most resulting analyses seen so far do not seem to have reviewed in details the theoretical bases for the proposal [14], championing GEODEs (GEneric Object of Dark Energy), and the actual origins of it, almost 60 years ago, by Erast Gliner and his team, associated with 31].…”

“…But across all these models, these theories are still controversial, and far from unambiguously validated by observations. The same continues for [9,10]. Some physicists have stepped in with objections [23], asserting for example that the data used in [9,10] is too small, questionable, or that anything can increase mass, not necessarily implying dark energy.…”

“…The same continues for [9,10]. Some physicists have stepped in with objections [23], asserting for example that the data used in [9,10] is too small, questionable, or that anything can increase mass, not necessarily implying dark energy.…”