English

Voyager 1 $e^\pm$ Further Constrain Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-02-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with a mass M1017M \lesssim {10^{17}}g 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<1016M<10^{16}g 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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.03075,
  title  = {Voyager 1 $e^\pm$ Further Constrain Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter},
  author = {Mathieu Boudaud and Marco Cirelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.03075},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

v2: small comments and references added, gamma-ray limits corrected in Fig. 2, matches journal version