Constraining the evaporation rate of primordial black holes using archival data from VERITAS

Understand

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are thought to have been formed as a result of density fluctuations in the very early Universe.

• It is suggested that PBHs of mass $\sim 5 \times 10^{14} \mathrm{\ g}$ or less have evaporated through the release of Hawking radiation by the present day.
• However, PBHs of initial mass $10^{15} \mathrm{\ g}$ should still be evaporating at the present epoch.
• Over the past few years, very high-energy (VHE; E $>$ 100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from PBHs in the form of a burst has been searched for using ground-based gamma-ray instruments.