English

Could a Primordial Black Hole Explosion Explain the extremely high-energy KM3NeT neutrino Event?

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-01-14 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

A black hole is expected to end its lifetime in a cataclysmic runaway burst of Hawking radiation, emitting all Standard Model particles with ultra-high energies. Thus, the explosion of a nearby primordial black hole (PBH) has been proposed as a possible explanation for the 220\sim 220~PeV neutrino-like event recently reported by the KM3NeT collaboration. If the event originated from a PBH, the source would need to lie at (17)×105pc(1-7)\times 10^{-5} \mathrm{pc} - depending on the assumed effective area - thus within the Solar System. At such proximity, the resulting flux of gamma rays and cosmic rays would be detectable at Earth. By incorporating the time-dependent field of view of gamma-ray observatories, we show that LHAASO should have recorded O(108)\mathcal{O}(10^8) events between fourteen and seven hours prior to the KM3NeT detection. IceCube and KM3NeT \textit{itself} should likewise have detected of order a few hundred events in the range 1 TeVEν1 PeV1~\mathrm{TeV} \lesssim E_\nu \lesssim 1~\mathrm{PeV} during the 24 hours preceding the burst. The absence of any such multi-messenger signal, particularly in gamma-ray data, strongly disfavors the interpretation of the KM3-230213A event as arising from evaporation in a minimal four-dimensional Schwarzschild scenario.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.24666,
  title  = {Could a Primordial Black Hole Explosion Explain the extremely high-energy KM3NeT neutrino Event?},
  author = {Lua F. T. Airoldi and Gustavo F. S. Alves and Yuber F. Perez-Gonzalez and Gabriel M. Salla and Renata Zukanovich Funchal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.24666},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures. v2: Accepted by PRL