Probing Dark Matter Particles from Evaporating Primordial Black Holes via Electron Scattering in the CDEX-10 Experiment

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) is a major constituent of the Universe. However, no definite evidence of DM particles (denoted as ``$\chi$") has been found in DM direct detection (DD) experiments to date. There is a novel concept of detecting $\chi$ from evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs). We search for $\chi$ emitted from PBHs by investigating their interaction with target electrons. The examined PBH masses range from 1$\times$10$^{15}$ to 7$\times$10$^{16}$ g under the current limits of PBH abundance $f_{PBH}$. Using 205.4 kg$\cdot$day data obtained from the CDEX-10 experiment conducted in the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, we exclude the $\chi$--electron ($\chi$--$e$) elastic-scattering cross section $\sigma_{\chi e} \sim 5\times10^{-29}$ cm$^2$ for $\chi$ with a mass $m_{\chi}\lesssim$ 0.1 keV from our results. With the higher radiation background but lower energy threshold (160 eV), CDEX-10 fill a part of the gap in the previous work. If ($m_{\chi}$, $\sigma_{\chi e}$) can be determined in the future, DD experiments are expected to impose strong constraints on $f_{PBH}$ for large $M_{PBH}$s.