No Arabic abstract
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with a mass $M lesssim {10^{17}}$g are expected to inject sub-GeV electrons and positrons in the Galaxy via Hawking radiation. These cosmic rays are shielded by the solar magnetic field for Earth-bound detectors, but not for Voyager-1, which is now beyond the heliopause. We use its data to constrain the fraction of PBHs to the dark matter in the Galaxy, finding that PBHs with $M<10^{16}$g cannot contribute more than 0.1% (or less for a lognormal mass distribution). Our limits are based on local galactic measurements and are thus complementary to those derived from cosmological observations.
We study the dynamics of a spectator Higgs field which stochastically evolves during inflation onto near-critical trajectories on the edge of a runaway instability. We show that its fluctuations do not produce primordial black holes (PBHs) in sufficient abundance to be the dark matter, nor do they produce significant second-order gravitational waves. First we show that the Higgs produces larger fluctuations on CMB scales than on PBH scales, itself a no-go for a viable PBH scenario. Then we track the superhorizon perturbations nonlinearly through reheating using the delta N formalism to show that they are not converted to large curvature fluctuations. Our conclusions hold regardless of any fine-tuning of the Higgs field for both the Standard Model Higgs and for Higgs potentials modified to prevent unbounded runaway.
The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently published a strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process that may be interpreted as a stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a signal can be explained by second-order gravitational waves produced during the formation of primordial black holes from the collapse of sizeable scalar perturbations generated during inflation. This possibility has two predictions: $i$) the primordial black holes may comprise the totality of the dark matter with the dominant contribution to their mass function falling in the range $(10^{-15}div 10^{-11}) M_odot$ and $ii$) the gravitational wave stochastic background will be seen as well by the LISA experiment.
Although the dark matter is usually assumed to be some form of elementary particle, primordial black holes (PBHs) could also provide some of it. However, various constraints restrict the possible mass windows to $10^{16}$ - $10^{17},$g, $10^{20}$ - $10^{24},$g and $10$ - $10^{3},M_{odot}$. The last possibility is contentious but of special interest in view of the recent detection of black-hole mergers by LIGO/Virgo. PBHs might have important consequences and resolve various cosmological conundra even if they have only a small fraction of the dark-matter density. In particular, those larger than $10^{3},M_{odot}$ could generate cosmological structures through the seed or Poisson effect, thereby alleviating some problems associated with the standard cold dark-matter scenario, and sufficiently large PBHs might provide seeds for the supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. More exotically, the Planck-mass relics of PBH evaporations or stupendously large black holes bigger than $10^{12},M_{odot}$ could provide an interesting dark component.
Reticulum II (Ret II) is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and presents a prime target to investigate the nature of dark matter (DM) because of its high mass-to-light ratio. We evaluate a dedicated INTEGRAL observation campaign data set to obtain $gamma$-ray fluxes from Ret II and compare those with expectations from DM. Ret II is not detected in the $gamma$-ray band 25--8000 keV, and we derive a flux limit of $lesssim 10^{-8},mathrm{erg,cm^{-2},s^{-1}}$. The previously reported 511 keV line is not seen, and we find a flux limit of $lesssim 1.7 times 10^{-4},mathrm{ph,cm^{-2},s^{-1}}$. We construct spectral models for primordial black hole (PBH) evaporation and annihilation/decay of particle DM, and subsequent annihilation of positrons produced in these processes. We exclude that the totality of DM in Ret II is made of a monochromatic distribution of PBHs of masses $lesssim 8 times 10^{15},mathrm{g}$. Our limits on the velocity-averaged DM annihilation cross section into $e^+e^-$ are $langle sigma v rangle lesssim 5 times 10^{-28} left(m_{rm DM} / mathrm{MeV} right)^{2.5},mathrm{cm^3,s^{-1}}$. We conclude that analysing isolated targets in the MeV $gamma$-ray band can set strong bounds on DM properties without multi-year data sets of the entire Milky Way, and encourage follow-up observations of Ret II and other dwarf galaxies.
The mechanism of the generation of dark matter and dark radiation from the evaporation of primordial black holes is very interesting. We consider the case of Kerr black holes to generalize previous results obtained in the Schwarzschild case. For dark matter, the results do not change dramatically and the bounds on warm dark matter apply similarly: in particular, the Kerr case cannot save the scenario of black hole domination for light dark matter. For dark radiation, the expectations for $Delta N_{eff}$ do not change significantly with respect to the Schwarzschild case, but for an enhancement in the case of spin 2 particles: in the massless case, however, the projected experimental sensitivity would be reached only for extremal black holes.