Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: A nearby primordial-black-hole (PBH) evaporation burst would produce a curved gamma-ray wavefront, leading to detectable departures from plane-wave inter-satellite delays. We introduce a geometric method that combines imaging localizations with multi-spacecraft timing to determine the distance of a gamma-ray transient. Applied to Swift-localized short GRBs, the most constraining event reaches 1.2 AU, already probing a meaningful Solar System-scale regime. Our analysis shows that direct distance measurements are achievable to 103 AU scales with the current and near-future technical capabilities. Once a finite source distance is measured, the corresponding PBH mass and lifetime can be directly inferred. Future wide-field localization and long-baseline deep-space gamma-ray detectors could extend such searches to 105 AU and beyond.
Authors: Shuo Xiao, Shuang-Nan Zhang
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7160122098
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