Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2020
Department
Department of Physics
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.
Publication Title
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Recommended Citation
Albert, A.,
Alfaro, R.,
Alvarez, C.,
Arteaga-Velázquez, J.,
Arunbabu, K.,
Rojas, D.,
Solares, H.,
Baghmanyan, V.,
Belmont-Moreno, E.,
Benzvi, S.,
Brisbois, C.,
Caballero-Mora, K.,
Capistrán, T.,
Carramiñana, A.,
Casanova, S.,
Cotti, U.,
Cotzomi, J.,
Fuente, E.,
De León, C.,
Dingus, B.,
Duvernois, M.,
Díaz-Vélez, J.,
Ellsworth, R.,
Engel, K.,
Espinoza, C.,
Fleischhack, H.,
Fraija, N.,
Galván-Gámez, A.,
García-González, J.,
Garfias, F.,
González, M.,
Goodman, J.,
Hona, B.,
Huang, D.,
&
Huentemeyer, P.
(2020).
Constraining the local burst rate density of primordial black holes with HAWC.
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics,
2020(4).
http://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2020/04/026
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/2721
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Sissa Medialab. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2020/04/026