Primordial black hole formation and hybrid inflation

Abstract

We calculate the contribution to the curvature perturbation, that is generated while the waterfall field grows exponentially (which can occur only if the waterfall field mass is $m\gg H$). We consider the upper bound on its spectrum coming from constraints on the abundance of primordial black holes, taking account of possible non-gaussianity. The constraint is satisfied, but extrapolation of our result to the regime $m\sim H$ suggests that the constraint might not be satisfied there.