Establishing the Nonprimordial Origin of Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers

Primordial black holes (PBHs) from the early universe constitute attractive dark matter candidates. First detections of black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) candidate gravitational wave events by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration, GW200105 and GW200115, already prompted speculations about nonastrophysical origin. We analyze, for the first time, the total volumetric merger rates of PBH-NS binaries formed via two-body gravitational scattering, finding them to be subdominant to the astrophysical BH-NS rates. In contrast to binary black holes, a significant fraction of which can be of primordial origin, either formed in dark matter halos or in the early universe, PBH-NS rates cannot be significantly enhanced by contributions preceding star formation. Our findings imply that the identified BH-NS events are of astrophysical origin, even when PBH-PBH events significantly contribute to the gravitational wave observations.