INTEGRAL constraints on primordial black holes and particle dark matter
By Ranjan Laha, Julian B. Muñoz, T. Slatyer. 2020
177 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory ($INTEGRAL$) satellite has yielded unprecedented measurements of the soft gamma-ray spectrum of our Galaxy. Here we use those measurements to set constraints on dark matter (DM) that decays or annihilates into photons with energies $E\ensuremath{\approx}0.02--2\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$. First, we revisit the constraints on particle DM that decays or annihilates to photon pairs. In particular, for decaying DM, we find that previous limits were overstated by roughly an order of magnitude. Our new, conservative analysis finds that the DM lifetime must satisfy $\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{26}\text{ }\mathrm{s}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}({m}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}/\mathrm{MeV}{)}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for DM masses ${m}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}=0.054--3.6\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$. For MeV-scale DM that annihilates into photons $INTEGRAL$ sets the strongest constraints to date. Second, we target ultralight primordial black holes (PBHs) through their Hawking radiation. This makes them appear as decaying DM with a photon spectrum peaking at $E\ensuremath{\approx}5.77/(8\ensuremath{\pi}G{M}_{\mathrm{PBH}})$, for a PBH of mass ${M}_{\mathrm{PBH}}$. We use the $INTEGRAL$ data to demonstrate that, at 95% C.L., PBHs with masses less than $1.2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{17}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{g}$ cannot comprise all of the DM, setting the tightest bound to date on ultralight PBHs.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d418581867c5d71a3077d26e20c5c729bed480e
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Citations in the corpus
- Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments (2020, background): “Other limits are associated with γ-ray and radio observations of the Galactic centre [150, 151] and the ionising effect of 10 – 10 g PBHs [12].”
- Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates (2021, background): “Other limits are associated with γ-ray and radio observations of the Galactic centre [111,112] and the ionising effect of 1016 – 1017 g PBHs [113].”