Abstract: Primordial black holes (PBHs) are an exciting prospect for accounting for anywhere from .1 percent to the entirety of the dark matter abundance. In my talk, I will present recent and ongoing work on the production of PBHs from a generic class of inflationary models that incorporate realistic features from high-energy physics—including multiple interacting scalar fields and nonminimal couplings to the spacetime Ricci scalar—that produce black holes within the range required to address the present-day dark matter abundance. These models, which feature large-field plateaus and small-field features that together induce a period of ultra-slow-roll inflation—yield predictions for observables, such as the tensor-to-scalar ratio and spectral index, in close agreement with the most recent measurements, whilst producing dark matter in sufficient abundance to be all the dark matter, and gravitational waves within reach of next-generation experiments. I will discuss soon-to-appear results from Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations which I have used to study the full parameter space of this class of inflationary potentials, and show that my results indicate that the degree of fine-tuning of parameters needed to produce PBHs within the relevant mass range is no worse than the fine-tuning needed in any slow-roll inflationary model that satisfies constraints from Planck.  If time permits, I will also discuss ongoing work on PBH formation from ultra-slow-roll that occurs in models where inflation is driven by a stabilized Higgs potential.

https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/98941053722?pwd=TVRFMURlSHlJSHl1OE0xelh1a0FLdz09