Effect of post-recombination accretion on primordial binary black hole mergers within virialized dark matter halos

Abstract Gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers remain among primary sources for ground-based and space laser interferometers. Primordial binary black holes (PBHs) can form binaries in the early Universe or at the matter-dominated stage in virialized dark matter halos at redshifts z ∼ 7 – 15. We study enhancement of primordial binary PBH merger rate in virialized dark matter halos due to baryon accretion in the post-recombination epoch within two accretion models onto individual PBH — Bondi-Hoyle-Littleton (BHL) and Park-Ricotti (PR), representing two extreme cases of the accretion efficiency. We calculate modification of the initial PBH mass function and their fractional contribution to dark matter. A significant enhancement in the binary PBH merger rate is found for the late three-body channel, which was previously treated as subdominant. In the case of delayed virialization onset at z < 10, merger rates of dynamically formed PBH binaries are limited by the existing LVK binary BH detections. An increased merger frequency is revealed for PBH binaries with highly asymmetric mass ratios. We also calculate expected detection rates of binary PBH mergers for the TianQin space-based gravitational-wave interferometer and show them to be optimistic in the BHL accretion case even for very low initial PBH abundances f PBH ∼ 10 -6 .