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In the last two years, gravitational wave observatories have detected mergers of compact astrophysical objects with tantalisingly low masses. These novel detections now raise questions about their identities and the inevitable question: what will be the interpretation of a possible sub-solar mass detection, which may be just around the corner? Primordial black holes, with fine-tuned parameters and unknown formation mechanisms are the most discussed explanations of these objects. Particle dark matter with no antiparticle counterpart, owing to their interaction with stellar nuclei, can catastrophically accumulate inside compact stars and eventually transmute them to sub-solar mass black holes, ordinarily forbidden by the Chandrasekhar limit. Our recent work points out several avenues to test the transmuted origin of low mass black holes, and demonstrates that binary merger rates at high redshift are distinctively different for primordial and transmuted black holes. Measurement of these merger rates by the imminent gravitational wave detectors can conclusively test the origin of low mass black holes.
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