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Take a primordial black hole and measure the Hawking radiation over a large amount of time by gamma-ray detectors, as well as a Large neutrino detector. Using theoretical calculations about the composition of Hawking radiation combined with the detected neutrino flux you can determine the neutrino luminosity. Combine that with the luminosity in the form of gamma rays and whatever particles the Black hole is hot enough to produce, and then compare that with the loss in mass over time. If you detect a discrepancy, it's likely the missing flux is in the form of gravitons.

Would this experiment work? I did also consider using a primordial black hole cold enough to not emit neutrinos but the Hawking radiation calculator I used gave a black hole lifetime greater than most estimates of the lifetime of a proton.

Níck Aguiar Alves
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blademan9999
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2 Answers2

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In principle, I see no reason for why that would not work. However, notice that even the existence of primordial black holes can be thought of as questionable and their detection even more. Furthermore, as mentioned in the comments, any particle should be taken into account, including particles we don't yet know to exist.

It should also be added that gravitons, just as photons, are massless particles. Hence, you don't really need a small black hole to get graviton emission. It seems to be that it would be more fruitful to use cold black holes as a test for gravitons, as that could allow to search for massless particles.

It might interest you to know that using Hawking radiation to probe new particles is indeed a recent proposal, although the case I know of is as a search for dark matter. See arXiv: 2107.00013 [hep-ph] if this interests you.

Níck Aguiar Alves
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A graviton is a quantum of gravitational radiation, and when people talk about demonstrating the existence of gravitons, they mean demonstrating that gravitational radiation is quantized. Your experiment doesn't do that. At best, if you solved all of the other problems, it would only show that gravitational radiation exists, which we already know.

benrg
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