Impact of Primordial Black Holes Induced Neutrinos on the Cosmic 21-cm Brightness Temperature

Abstract

We study the impact of neutrinos emitted from evaporating Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) on the global 21-cm absorption signal during the dark ages and pre-reionization epochs. PBHs emit neutrinos over a wide energy range through Hawking evaporation. We investigate the possibility that radiative scattering between these neutrinos and the Cosmic Neutrino Background (C$\nu$B) generates secondary photons, leading to additional heating of the neutral hydrogen gas. This modifies the thermal history of the intergalactic medium and increases the global 21-cm brightness temperature relative to the standard cosmological prediction. Using the absorption feature at redshift $z\simeq 17$, we derive new constraints on the PBH fraction for PBH masses in the range $10^{15}\mathrm{g}\lesssim m_{\mathrm{BH},0}\lesssim 10^{25}\mathrm{g}$. We further use existing PBH limits to constrain neutrino self-interaction couplings over a broad range of mediator masses. Our analysis complements previous studies that focused on direct photon injection from PBH evaporation and highlights the importance of neutrino-induced effects within a multimessenger framework for probing PBHs and beyond-standard-model neutrino interactions.

Comments: 13 pages, 9 figures