English

Primordial black holes and the observed Galactic 511 keV line

Astrophysics 2009-10-17 v4 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

The observed 511 keV line from the Galactic Bulge is a real challenge for theoretical astrophysics: despite a lot of suggested mechanisms, there is still no convincing explanation and the origin of the annihilated positrons remains unknown. Here we discuss the possibility that a population of slowly evaporating primordial black holes with the mass around 1016101710^{16}-10^{17} g ejects (among other particles) low--energy positrons into the Galaxy. In addition to positrons, we have also calculated the spectrum and number density of photons and neutrinos produced by such black holes and found that the photons are potentially observable in the near future, while the neutrino flux is too weak and below the terrestrial and extra--terrestrial backgrounds. Depending on their mass distribution, such black holes could make a small fraction or the whole cosmological dark matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0801.2786,
  title  = {Primordial black holes and the observed Galactic 511 keV line},
  author = {Cosimo Bambi and Alexander D. Dolgov and Alexey A. Petrov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.2786},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 7 figures. v4: refereed version + erratum