Primordial black hole probes of heavy neutral leptons

Primordial black holes (PBH), while still constituting a viable dark matter component, are expected to evaporate through Hawking radiation. Assuming the semi-classical approximation holds up to near the Planck scale, PBHs are expected to evaporate by the present time, emitting a significant flux of particles in their final moments, if produced in the early Universe with an initial mass of ∼ 10^15 g. These ”exploding” black holes will release a burst of Standard Model particles alongside any additional degrees of freedom, should they exist. We explore the possibility that heavy neutral leptons (HNL), mixing with active neutrinos, are emitted in the final evaporation stages. We calculate the expected number of active neutrinos from such an event, including contributions due to the HNL decay for different assumptions on the mixings. We infer sensitivities on the active-sterile neutrino mixing and on the sterile neutrino mass, finding that, for instance, for the scenario where U_τ 4≠ 0, IceCube could improve current constraints by ∼ 2 orders of magnitude, for HNLs masses between 0.1 - 1 GeV, for a PBH at a distance of ∼ 10^-4 pc from Earth.