We investigate the sensitivity of the reheating history to the abundance of primordial black holes (PBHs). Contrary to the monochromatic case of the mass fraction of PBHs, the reheating era with different $e$-foldings and equations of state can have a substantial impact on the abundance of PBHs with an extended mass fraction. We demonstrate explicitly this reheating sensitivity in an illustrative model of single-field inflation with a quasi-inflection point, and find that both the peak position and amplitude of the extended mass fraction as well as the abundance of PBHs in DM can vary by many orders of magnitude, which adds another layer of uncertainty to the PBH scenarios as dark matter.

• Received 28 June 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.043538