Volume 501 - 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2025) - Dark-Matter Physics
Cosmic antimatter signatures from primordial back holes
L. Stefanuto*, V. De Romeri, F. Donato, D. Maurin and A. Tolino
*: corresponding author
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: September 24, 2025
Published on:
Abstract
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are hypothetical objects that may have formed in the early Universe and could account for part of the dark matter content. Through Hawking radiation (HR), PBHs can emit particles that may ultimately lead to the production of antinuclei such as antiprotons and antideuterons, which subsequently propagate through the Galaxy and reach Earth as cosmic rays (CRs). These particles are expected to exhibit fluxes peaking at GeV energies, making them promising messengers for new physics.
In this work, we re-examine the production of CR antiprotons and antideuterons from PBH evaporation. Our analysis employs lognormal PBH mass distributions, up-to-date CR propagation models, and an improved coalescence approach for modeling antideuteron formation. We compare our predictions to the latest AMS-02 measurements of the antiproton flux. We find that the AMS-02 antiproton data impose stringent constraints on the local PBH density, with limits that strongly depend on the parameters characterizing the lognormal mass distributions. These bounds are comparable to, or slightly stronger than, existing constraints derived from other astrophysical messengers.
We further explore the prospects for detecting antideuterons in future experiments. Any potential observation of antideuterons by AMS-02 or GAPS would likely indicate new physics beyond standard secondary production processes. However, given the constraints on the local PBH density imposed by the AMS-02 antiproton data, such a signal could only partly be explained by PBH evaporation.

The results presented here are taken from our recent study, published in Physical Review D [Phys. Rev. D 112 (2025) 2, 023003]. For further details, we refer the reader to that work.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.501.0530
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