Black Hole Production by Cosmic Rays

TL;DR

At the Auger Observatory, hundreds of black hole events may be observed, providing evidence for extra dimensions and the first opportunity for experimental study of microscopic black holes.

Abstract

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays create black holes in scenarios with extra dimensions and TeV-scale gravity. In particular, cosmic neutrinos will produce black holes deep in the atmosphere, initiating quasi-horizontal showers far above the standard model rate. At the Auger Observatory, hundreds of black hole events may be observed, providing evidence for extra dimensions and the first opportunity for experimental study of microscopic black holes. If no black holes are found, the fundamental Planck scale must be above 2 TeV for any number of extra dimensions.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Cross sections $\sigma ( \nu N \to \text{BH})$ for $M_{\ast} = M_{\text{BH}}^{\text{min}} = 1~\text{TeV}$ and $n=1, \ldots, 7$ from above. (The last four curves are virtually indistinguishable.) The dotted curve is for the SM process $\nu N \to \ell X$.
• Figure 2: Neutrino flux from Greisen photoproduction (solid) Stecker:1979ah, and ground array (dashed) Capelle:1998zz and fluorescence (dotted) Diaz:2001mv acceptances of one Auger site for quasi-horizontal hadronic showers. For fluorescence detection, a duty cycle of 10% has been included.
• Figure 3: The number of black holes detected by the ground array in 5 Auger site-years as a function of $M_{\ast}=M_{\text{BH}}^{\text{min}}$ and the number of extra dimensions $n$.
• Figure 4: The number of black holes detected by the ground array in 5 Auger site-years as a function of $M_{\text{BH}}^{\text{min}}$ for $M_{\ast}=1~\text{TeV}$ and $n=1, \ldots, 7$ from above.