Cosmological constraints from primordial black holes

Primordial black holes may form in the early Universe, for example from the collapse of large amplitude density perturbations predicted in some inflationary models. Light black holes undergo Hawking evaporation, the energy injection from which is constrained both at the epoch of nucleosynthesis and at the present. The failure as yet to unambiguously detect primordial black holes places important constraints. In this article, we are particularly concerned with the dependence of these constraints on the model for the complete cosmological history, from the time of formation to the present. Black holes presently give the strongest constraint on the spectral index n of density perturbations, though this constraint does require n to be constant over a very wide range of scales. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.