Primordial regular black holes as all the dark matter. III. Covariant canonical quantum gravity models

Abstract: In earlier companion papers, we showed that non-singular primordial black holes (PBHs) could account for all the dark matter (DM) over a significantly wider mass range compared to Schwarzschild PBHs. Those studies, mostly based on phenomenological metrics, are now extended by considering the quantum-corrected space-time recently proposed by Zhang, Lewandowski, Ma and Yang (ZLMY), derived from an effective canonical (loop) quantum gravity approach explicitly enforcing general covariance. Unlike the BHs considered earlier, ZLMY BHs are free from Cauchy horizons, and are hotter than their Schwarzschild counterparts. We show that this higher temperature boosts the evaporation spectra of ZLMY PBHs, tightening limits on their abundance relative to Schwarzschild PBHs and shrinking the asteroid mass window where they can constitute all the DM, a result which reverses the earlier trend, but rests on firmer theoretical ground. While stressing the potential key role of quantum gravity effects in addressing the singularity and DM problems, our study shows that working within a consistent theoretical framework can strongly affect observational predictions.