It is argued that primordial black holes with initial masses satisfying M<1015 g, instead of having explode, might currently be in a quasistable phase contributing to a tiny fraction of the measured dark matter. This statement is based on a computation of black hole evaporation in which energy conservation is taken into account that shows that the backreaction to Hawking radiation favors the quasistabilization of the black hole. The result is specifically shown for general spherically symmetric quantum black holes described by an effective metric independently of the specific framework from which it is derived. The quintessential primordial black hole is fully analyzed as an example.

Peer Reviewed