Understand
While Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with masses $M_{\rm PBH} \gtrsim 10^{-11} \, M_\odot$ cannot comprise the entirety of dark matter, the existence of even a small population of these objects can have profound astrophysical consequences.
- A sub-dominant population of PBHs will efficiently accrete dark matter particles before matter-radiation equality, giving rise to high-density dark matter spikes.
- We consider here the scenario in which dark matter is comprised primarily of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with a small sub-dominant contribution coming from PBHs, and revisit the constraints on the annihilation of WIMPs in these spikes using observations of the isotropic gamma-ray background (IGRB) and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), for a range of WIMP masses, annihilation channels, cross sections, and PBH mass functions.
- We find that the constraints derived using the IGRB have been significantly overestimated (in some cases by many orders of magnitude), and that limits obtained using observations of the CMB are typically stronger than, or comparable to, those coming from the IGRB.