English

The 511 keV Excess and Primordial Black Holes

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2022-04-11 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

An excess of 511 keV photons has been detected from the central region of the Milky Way. It has been suggested that the positrons responsible for this signal could be produced through the Hawking evaporation of primordial black holes. After evaluating the constraints from INTEGRAL, COMPTEL, and Voyager 1, we find that black holes in mass range of (14)×1016\sim(1-4)\times10^{16} g could potentially produce this signal if they make up a small fraction of the total dark matter density. Proposed MeV-scale gamma-ray telescopes such as AMEGO or e-ASTROGAM should be able to test this class of scenarios by measuring the diffuse gamma ray emission from the Milky Way's inner halo.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.08611,
  title  = {The 511 keV Excess and Primordial Black Holes},
  author = {Celeste Keith and Dan Hooper},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.08611},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures