Voyager 1 e^± Further Constrain Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter

2018/07/31 by Mathieu Boudaud, Marco Cirelli · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.HE #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.122.041104

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 041104 (2019) · v2: small comments and references added, gamma-ray limits corrected in Fig. 2, matches journal version

arxiv created 2019/01/14 · arxiv updated 2019/02/06

Abstract

Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with a mass M \lesssim 10¹⁷g 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<10¹⁶g 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.

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