Terrestrial density of strongly-coupled relics
[4]
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- New York University (NYU), NY (United States); Princeton University, NJ (United States). Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences
- University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States); University of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)
The simplest cosmologies motivate the consideration of dark matter subcomponents that interact significantly with normal matter. Moreover, such strongly coupled relics may have evaded detection to date if upon encountering the Earth they rapidly thermalize down to terrestrial temperatures, T⊕~ 300K ~ 25 meV, well below the thresholds of most existing dark matter detectors. This shedding of kinetic energy implies a drastic enhancement to the local density, motivating the consideration of alternative detection techniques sensitive to a large density of slowly moving dark matter particles. In this work, we provide a rigorous semianalytic derivation of the terrestrial overdensities of strongly coupled relics, with a particular focus on millicharged particles (MCPs). We go beyond previous studies by incorporating improved estimates of the MCP-atomic scattering cross section, new contributions to the terrestrial density of sub-GeV relics that are independent of the Earth’s gravitational field, and local modifications that can arise due to the cryogenic environments of precision sensors. We also generalize our analysis in order to estimate the terrestrial density of thermalized MCPs that are produced from the collisions of high-energy cosmic rays and become bound by the Earth’s electric field.
- Research Organization:
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); Simons Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11359; SC0007968; SC0011842
- OSTI ID:
- 1958448
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 2337563
- Report Number(s):
- FERMILAB-PUB--23-064-T; arXiv:2302.06619; oai:inspirehep.net:2632003
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 109; ISSN 2470-0010
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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