Current and future neutrino limits on the abundance of primordial black holes

TL;DR

This paper improves constraints on primordial black hole abundance using neutrino data from Super-Kamiokande and forecasts future limits with next-generation detectors, considering various mass distributions and comparing with previous results.

Contribution

It provides updated and forecasted neutrino-based constraints on primordial black holes across a broad mass range, incorporating new detector sensitivities and distribution models.

Findings

Current Super-Kamiokande data sets new limits on PBH abundance.

Future detectors like Hyper-Kamiokande and DUNE will significantly improve constraints.

Constraints vary depending on PBH mass distribution and model assumptions.

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) formed in the early Universe are sources of neutrinos emitted via Hawking radiation. Such astrophysical neutrinos could be detected at Earth and constraints on the abundance of comet-mass PBHs could be derived from the null observation of this neutrino flux. Here, we consider non-rotating PBHs and improve constraints using Super-Kamiokande neutrino data, as well as we perform forecasts for next-generation neutrino (Hyper-Kamiokande, JUNO, DUNE) and dark matter (DARWIN, ARGO) detectors, which we compare. For PBHs less massive than $\sim \textrm{few} \times 10^{14}$ g, PBHs would have already evaporated by now, whereas more massive PBHs would still be present and would constitute a fraction of the dark matter of the Universe. We consider monochromatic and extended (log-normal) mass distributions, and a PBH mass range spanning from $10^{12}$ g to $\sim 10^{16}$ g. Finally, we also compare our results with previous ones in the literature.