Primordial Black Hole Formation during a Strongly Coupled Crossover

The final mass distribution of primordial black holes is sensitive to the equation of state of the Universe at the scales accessible by the power spectrum. Motivated by the presence of phase transitions in several beyond the Standard Model theories, some of which are strongly coupled, we analyze the production of primordial black holes during such phase transitions, which we model using the gauge/gravity duality. We focus in the (often regarded as physically uninteresting) case for which the phase transition is just a smooth crossover. We find an enhancement of primordial black hole production in the range $M_{\rm{PBH}}\in[10^{-16},10^{-6}]M_{\odot}$.
Comment: 5 pages + references, 4 figures. v3: minor changes, updated to match the published version in PRD