Primordial Black Holes in the Solar System

TL;DR

This study investigates whether primordial black holes could be detected through their gravitational effects on planetary orbits in the solar system, finding current measurement precision insufficient for detection.

Contribution

The paper provides detailed numerical simulations of PBH-induced perturbations on planetary orbits and assesses their detectability with current and future measurement accuracy.

Findings

PBHs' gravitational effects are dominated by the closest encounters.

Current measurement uncertainties are too large to detect PBHs.

Improved ranging accuracy could enable future detection of PBHs.

Abstract

If primordial black holes (PBHs) of asteroidal mass make up the entire dark matter, they could be detectable through their gravitational influence in the solar system. In this work, we study the perturbations that PBHs induce on the orbits of planets. Detailed numerical simulations of the solar system, embedded in a halo of PBHs, are performed. We find that the gravitational effect of the PBHs is dominated by the closest encounter. Using the Earth-Mars distance as an observational probe, we show that the perturbations are smaller than the current measurement uncertainties and thus PBHs are not directly constrained by solar system ephemerides. We estimate that an improvement in the ranging accuracy by an order of magnitude or the extraction of signals well below the noise level is required to detect the gravitational influence of PBHs in the solar system in the foreseeable future.