Constraining dark matter using 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations I: Primordial black holes
Abstract
Primordial black holes (PBHs) in the asteroid-mass window remain a viable dark matter candidate. In the lower part of this mass range, Hawking evaporation produces electrons and positrons that generate diffuse hard X-ray emission through inverse Compton (IC) scattering on Galactic radiation fields. We present the first search for this signal using a combined spectral and morphological analysis of the 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations. We construct a physically motivated model of the Galactic hard X-ray background, including IC emission from cosmic-ray electrons and unresolved accreting white dwarfs, and consistently incorporate the IC contribution from PBH evaporation. By exploiting both spatial and spectral information, we improve the separation between a possible PBH signal and astrophysical backgrounds compared to analyses based only on spectral data. We derive constraints on the PBH dark matter fraction over a broad mass range, including extended PBH mass functions and rotating PBHs. We assess the impact of uncertainties in cosmic-ray propagation and the Galactic dark matter density profile, finding that the propagation of low-energy electrons and positrons represents the main source of uncertainty in the predicted signal. Despite these limitations, our results provide competitive constraints over a wide range of PBH masses, highlighting the potential of hard X-ray observations as a complementary probe of evaporating PBHs.
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BibTeX
@misc{koechler2026constraining,
title = {{Constraining dark matter using 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations I: Primordial black holes}},
author = {Jordan Koechler and Pedro De la Torre Luque},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12044},
eprint = {2609.12044},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12044},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Constraining dark matter using 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations I: Primordial black holes
AU - Jordan Koechler
AU - Pedro De la Torre Luque
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12044
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12044
AB - Primordial black holes (PBHs) in the asteroid-mass window remain a viable dark matter candidate. In the lower part of this mass range, Hawking evaporation produces electrons and positrons that generate diffuse hard X-ray emission through inverse Compton (IC) scattering on Galactic radiation fields. We present the first search for this signal using a combined spectral and morphological analysis of the 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations. We construct a physically motivated model of the Galactic hard X-ray background, including IC emission from cosmic-ray electrons and unresolved accreting white dwarfs, and consistently incorporate the IC contribution from PBH evaporation. By exploiting both spatial and spectral information, we improve the separation between a possible PBH signal and astrophysical backgrounds compared to analyses based only on spectral data. We derive constraints on the PBH dark matter fraction over a broad mass range, including extended PBH mass functions and rotating PBHs. We assess the impact of uncertainties in cosmic-ray propagation and the Galactic dark matter density profile, finding that the propagation of low-energy electrons and positrons represents the main source of uncertainty in the predicted signal. Despite these limitations, our results provide competitive constraints over a wide range of PBH masses, highlighting the potential of hard X-ray observations as a complementary probe of evaporating PBHs.
ER -