Turning off the lights: How dark is dark matter?
By Samuel D. McDermott, Hai-Bo Yu, K. Zurek. 2010
212 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We consider current observational constraints on the electromagnetic charge of dark matter. The velocity dependence of the scattering cross section through the photon gives rise to qualitatively different constraints than standard dark matter scattering through massive force carriers. In particular, recombination epoch observations of dark matter density perturbations require that $ϵ$, the ratio of the dark matter to electronic charge, is less than ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}$ for ${m}_{X}=1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$, rising to $ϵl{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$ for ${m}_{X}=10\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$. Though naively one would expect that dark matter carrying a charge well below this constraint could still give rise to large scattering in current direct detection experiments, we show that charged dark matter particles that could be detected with upcoming experiments are expected to be evacuated from the Galactic disk by the Galactic magnetic fields and supernova shock waves and hence will not give rise to a signal. Thus dark matter with a small charge is likely not a source of a signal in current or upcoming dark matter direct detection experiments.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/febb2fb2889b1923e5eefc50bd268fd0193ce21f
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Citations in the corpus
- Supernova 1987A constraints on sub-GeV dark sectors, millicharged particles, the QCD axion, and an axion-like particle (2018, methodology): “In addition, we show constraints from Neff considerations at the time of BBN and the CMB, assuming no dark sector population after reheating [106], and we also show a region in which the DM has not decoupled from the SM at the time of the formation of the CMB [107, 108].”
- The four basic ways of creating dark matter through a portal (2011, unknown): “This might not be the case for milli-charged particles, as has been emphasized in [33] and further discussed in [27] (see also [34]), as magnetic fields in the Galaxy may lead to a depletion of the DM abundance at the position of the Sun [33].”
- Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, background): “Constraints and reach for milli-charged DM: stellar emission bounds from red giants (red), white dwarfs (green) and supernovae (orange) [92]; BBN (blue) [92]; decoupling at recombination (gray) [68]; Xenon10 (gray thin dashed curve) [80]; evacuation from the disk (dashed magenta curve) [68]; project”
- Dark radiation constraints on minicharged particles in models with a hidden photon (2013, background): “Let us also recall that the MCP relic abundance behaves as self-interacting dark matter, which is excluded by a number of arguments to be a dominant component of the observed cold dark matter [111, 112].”
- Non-Abelian dark matter and dark radiation (2015, methodology): “We then compute the rate of energy transfer to the DM from scattering [48, 49] with a thermal bath of dark gluons.”
- The waning of the WIMP? A review of models, searches, and constraints (2017, background): “(iii) The DM should be electromagnetically effectively neutral, as a result of null searches for stable charged particles [7, 8] as well as direct detection experiments, which”
- Semiconductor Probes of Light Dark Matter (2012, background): “Due to constraints on the possible electric charge of DM [14], the lowest dimensionality available for electromagnetic interactions corresponds to the dimension-five dipole moment operators Ldipole = − i 2 χ̄σ(μχ + dχγ (5))χFμν , (1) where μχ and dχ correspond to the DM magnetic and electric dipole ”
- Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils (2019, background): “While a subdominant component of millicharged DM, with or without a dark photon, is thus viable, it is possible that magnetic fields in the Galactic disk and supernovae will expel most of such DM from the Galactic disk [64, 110, 111].”
- Dark matter models and direct detection (2019, background): “A millicharged DM candidate can scatter off the protons and electrons with a Rutherford-type cross section, leading to both a suppression of the growth of DM structure [47] as well as a DM-baryon drag force which leaves an imprint on the CMB anisotropies [48].”