Search for primordial black hole dark matter with X-ray spectroscopic and imaging satellite experiments and prospects for future satellite missions

TL;DR

This paper constrains the contribution of ultra-light primordial black holes to dark matter using X-ray and gamma-ray observations, highlighting current limits and prospects for future satellite missions to improve these constraints.

Contribution

It provides new observational limits on ultra-light primordial black holes as dark matter candidates and discusses the potential of future satellite missions to enhance these constraints.

Findings

PBHs with masses below 10^{16} g cannot constitute all dark matter.

Current data restrict PBHs lighter than 3×10^{16} g to less than 10% of dark matter.

Future missions like THESEUS could improve constraints by up to two orders of magnitude.

Abstract

Ultra-light primordial black holes (PBHs) in the mass range of 10$^{16}$ - 10$^{22}$ g are allowed by current observations to constitute a significant fraction, if not all, of the dark matter in the Universe. In this work, we present limits on ultra-light, non-rotating PBHs which arise from the non-detection of the Hawking radiation signals from such objects in the keV-MeV energy band. Namely, we consider observations from the current-generation missions XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL/SPI and discuss the observational perspectives of the future missions Athena, eXTP, and THESEUS for PBH searches. Based on 3.4 Msec total exposure time XMM-Newton observations of Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy, we conclude that PBH with masses $\lesssim 10^{16}$ g can not make all dark matter at 95% confidence level. Our ON-OFF-type analysis of $>100$ Msec of INTEGRAL/SPI data on the Milky Way halo puts significantly stronger constraints. Only $\lesssim 10$% dark matter can be presented by PBHs with masses $\lesssim 3\cdot 10^{16}$ g while the majority of dark matter can not be represented by PBHs lighter than $7\cdot 10^{16}$ g at 95% confidence level. We discuss the strong impact of systematic uncertainty related to the variations of instrumental and astrophysical INTEGRAL/SPI background on the derived results and estimate its level. We also show that future large-field-of-view missions such as THESEUS/X-GIS will be able to improve the constraints by a factor of 10-100 depending on the level of control under the systematics of these instruments.