Optical pulses from primordial black hole explosions

Abstract

REES¹ has pointed out recently that explosions of small black holes² could be detected by the radio or optical emission from an expanding relativistic shock wave interacting with the ambient magnetic field. The frequency of the radiation is determined by the value of a parameter γ_f=(2×10¹⁶ g/M_crit), where M_crit is the mass at which the black hole explodes. Jelley et al.³ have considered the optical emission and the radio emission which will occur for γ_f∼10⁵, and shown that upper limits can be set for the rate of explosions, from previous measurements at 150 and 1,700 MHz.