Speaker
Description
In this talk, we present our recent work on cosmic antiproton and antideuteron signatures from primordial black holes (PBHs).
Light PBHs may have formed in the early Universe and could contribute to the dark matter content of our Galaxy. Their Hawking evaporation can lead to the production of antinuclei, which propagate through the Galaxy and reach Earth as cosmic rays with fluxes peaking at GeV energies. We revisit the expected antiproton and antideuteron signals from PBH evaporation, assuming a lognormal PBH mass distribution, state-of-the-art cosmic-ray propagation models, and an improved coalescence framework for antideuteron formation, whose most recent developments will be discussed in more detail in this talk.
Our predictions are compared with AMS-02 measurements of the antiproton flux. We find that AMS-02 data place stringent constraints on the Galactic PBH density, with bounds that depend sensitively on the parameters of the lognormal mass distribution and are comparable to, or slightly stronger than, those derived from other messengers.
Finally, we discuss the prospects for future detection of antideuterons. Given the AMS-02 antiproton limits, we predict that any future observation of cosmic antideuterons by AMS-02 or GAPS would constitute a clear signal of new physics, only part of which could, however, be explained by PBH evaporation.