Constraints on primordial black holes from Galactic gamma-ray background

TL;DR

This paper constrains the abundance of primordial black holes using gamma-ray background observations, emphasizing the importance of the PBH mass distribution and the contribution of low-mass tails to the Galactic gamma-ray background.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how PBH mass function shapes affect gamma-ray background constraints, including scenarios with extended and nearly-monochromatic mass distributions.

Findings

Galactic gamma-ray background constrains PBH abundance based on mass distribution.

Low-mass tail of PBHs significantly impacts gamma-ray background limits.

Critical collapse scenarios allow for PBHs to account for dark matter without violating gamma-ray constraints.

Abstract

The fraction of the Universe going into primordial black holes (PBHs) with initial mass M_* \approx 5 \times 10^{14} g, such that they are evaporating at the present epoch, is strongly constrained by observations of both the extragalactic and Galactic gamma-ray backgrounds. However, while the dominant contribution to the extragalactic background comes from the time-integrated emission of PBHs with initial mass M_*, the Galactic background is dominated by the instantaneous emission of those with initial mass slightly larger than M_* and current mass below M_*. Also, the instantaneous emission of PBHs smaller than 0.4 M_* mostly comprises secondary particles produced by the decay of directly emitted quark and gluon jets. These points were missed in the earlier analysis by Lehoucq et al. using EGRET data. For a monochromatic PBH mass function, with initial mass (1+\mu) M_* and \mu << 1, the current mass is (3\mu)^{1/3} M_* and the Galactic background constrains the fraction of the Universe going into PBHs as a function of \mu. However, the initial mass function cannot be precisely monochromatic and even a tiny spread of mass around M_* would generate a current low-mass tail of PBHs below M_*. This tail would be the main contributor to the Galactic background, so we consider its form and the associated constraints for a variety of scenarios with both extended and nearly-monochromatic initial mass functions. In particular, we consider a scenario in which the PBHs form from critical collapse and have a mass function which peaks well above M_*. In this case, the largest PBHs could provide the dark matter without the M_* ones exceeding the gamma-ray background limits.