Abstract
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) may have been created by density fluctuations in the early Universe and could be as massive as > 109 solar masses or as small as the Planck mass. It has been postulated that a black hole has a temperature inversely-proportional to its mass and will thermally emit all species of fundamental particles via Hawking Radiation. PBHs with initial masses of ∼ 5 × 1014 g (approximately one gigaton) should be expiring today with bursts of high-energy gamma radiation in the GeV-TeV energy range. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is sensitive to gamma rays with energies of ∼300 GeV to past 100 TeV, which corresponds to the high end of the PBH burst spectrum. With its large instantaneous field-of-view of ∼ 2 sr and a duty cycle over 95%, the HAWC Observatory is well suited to perform an all-sky search for PBH bursts. We conducted a search using 959 days of HAWC data and exclude the local PBH burst rate density above 3400 pc-3 yr-1 at 99% confidence, the strongest limit on the local PBH burst rate density from any existing electromagnetic measurement.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 026 |
Journal | Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics |
Volume | 2020 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2020 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020 The Author(s).
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Astronomy and Astrophysics