Abstract
If there is a population of black holes distributed randomly in space, light rays passing in their vicinity will acquire random phases. In the “two-slit” model of an interferometer this can, for a high density of black holes, lead to a diffusion in the phase difference between the two arms of the interferometer and thus to a loss of coherence or “visibility” in interferometric observations. Hence the existence of “fringe contrast” or “visibility” in interferometric observations can be used to put a limit on the possible presence of black holes along the flight path. We give a formula for this effect and consider its application, particularly for observations in cosmology. Under the assumption that the dark matter consists of primordial black holes, we consider sources at high z, up to the CMB. While the strongest results are for the CMB as the most remote source, more nearby sources at high z lead to similar effects. The effect increases with the baseline, and in the limiting case of the CMB we find that with earth-size baselines a nonzero “visibility” would limit the mass of possible primordial black holes, to approximately M∕M⊙≤10−1. Although such limits would not appear to be as strong as those obtained, say from microlensing, they involve a much different methodology and are dominated by very early times (see Table 1). Longer baselines lead to more stringent limits and in principle with extreme lengths, the method could possibly find positive evidence for primordial black holes. In this case, however, all other kinds of phase averaging would have to be constrained or eliminated.
