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Title: Accelerating Earth-bound dark matter

Abstract

A fraction of the dark matter may consist of a particle species that interacts much more strongly with the Standard Model than a typical weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) of similar mass. Such a strongly interacting dark matter component could have avoided detection in searches for WIMP-like dark matter through its interactions with the material in the atmosphere and the Earth that slow it down significantly before reaching detectors underground. These same interactions can also enhance the density of a strongly interacting dark matter species near the Earth’s surface to well above the local galactic dark matter density. In this work, we propose two new methods of detecting strongly interacting dark matter based on accelerating the enhanced population expected in the Earth through scattering. The first approach is to use underground nuclear accelerator beams to upscatter the ambient dark matter population into a WIMP-style detector located downstream. In the second technique, dark matter is upscattered with an intense thermal source and detected with a low-threshold dark matter detector. We also discuss potential candidates for strongly interacting dark matter, and we show that the scenario can be naturally realized with a hidden fermion coupled to a sub-GeV dark photon.

Authors:
; ORCiD logo; ORCiD logo; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Simons Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
OSTI Identifier:
1880693
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1905533
Grant/Contract Number:  
desc0011842; SC0012012; 100495; SC0011842; 273327; 305494; 824870; PHY2014215; GBMF7946
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Physical Review D
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Volume: 106 Journal Issue: 3; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS

Citation Formats

McKeen, David, Moore, Marianne, Morrissey, David E., Pospelov, Maxim, and Ramani, Harikrishnan. Accelerating Earth-bound dark matter. United States: N. p., 2022. Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.106.035011.
McKeen, David, Moore, Marianne, Morrissey, David E., Pospelov, Maxim, & Ramani, Harikrishnan. Accelerating Earth-bound dark matter. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.035011
McKeen, David, Moore, Marianne, Morrissey, David E., Pospelov, Maxim, and Ramani, Harikrishnan. Wed . "Accelerating Earth-bound dark matter". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.035011.
@article{osti_1880693,
title = {Accelerating Earth-bound dark matter},
author = {McKeen, David and Moore, Marianne and Morrissey, David E. and Pospelov, Maxim and Ramani, Harikrishnan},
abstractNote = {A fraction of the dark matter may consist of a particle species that interacts much more strongly with the Standard Model than a typical weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) of similar mass. Such a strongly interacting dark matter component could have avoided detection in searches for WIMP-like dark matter through its interactions with the material in the atmosphere and the Earth that slow it down significantly before reaching detectors underground. These same interactions can also enhance the density of a strongly interacting dark matter species near the Earth’s surface to well above the local galactic dark matter density. In this work, we propose two new methods of detecting strongly interacting dark matter based on accelerating the enhanced population expected in the Earth through scattering. The first approach is to use underground nuclear accelerator beams to upscatter the ambient dark matter population into a WIMP-style detector located downstream. In the second technique, dark matter is upscattered with an intense thermal source and detected with a low-threshold dark matter detector. We also discuss potential candidates for strongly interacting dark matter, and we show that the scenario can be naturally realized with a hidden fermion coupled to a sub-GeV dark photon.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.106.035011},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 3,
volume = 106,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Aug 10 00:00:00 EDT 2022},
month = {Wed Aug 10 00:00:00 EDT 2022}
}

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