Neutrinos from Primordial Black Hole Evaporation (1908.05403v1)

Abstract: Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) are candidates for dark matter as well as ultra-high energy cosmic rays. PBHs are speculated to exist over a large range of masses, from below $10^{15}$ g to $10^3$ M$_\odot$. Here we search for PBHs with an initial mass of $\sim 10^{15}$ g. Hawking radiation by black holes of this initial mass predicts their evaporation at present time. PBHs are expected to produce copious amounts of high-energy neutrinos and gamma rays right before evaporating. Gamma-ray instruments such as Fermi, VERITAS, HAWC, HESS, and Milagro have conducted searches for evaporating PBHs during their last second to a year of existence. They are able to detect bursts from PBHs in a range of $10^{-3}$ to $0.1$ pc. We present sensitivity to PBH evaporation using one year of neutrino data by IceCube. In these proceedings, we detail the changes to adapt IceCube's standard neutrino flare search, aka time-dependent point source search, into one that is appropriate for evaporating BHs. These proceedings serve as proof of concept for a first-ever search for evaporating PBHs using neutrinos that can use 10 years of IceCube data.