A New Solar System Dark Matter Population of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
- DARC, Observatoire de Paris-CNRS, F-92195 Meudon (France)
- Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7079 (United States); QUANTUM MECHANICS, MULTI-PHOTON PROCESSES, PHOTON-ATOM COLLISIONS, OSCILLATIONS, OPTICS, POPULATION INVERSION, INTERFERENCE, ENERGY LEVELS, FLUCTUATIONS
Perturbations due to the planets combined with the non-Coulomb nature of the gravitational potential in the Sun imply that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that are gravitationally captured by scattering in surface layers of the Sun can evolve into orbits that no longer intersect the Sun. For orbits with a semimajor axis {lt} 1/2 of Jupiter{close_quote}s orbit, such WIMPs can persist in the solar system for {gt} 10{sup 9} years, leading to a previously unanticipated population intersecting Earth{close_quote}s orbit. For WIMPs detectable in the next generation of detectors, this population can provide a complementary signal, in the keV range, to that of galactic halo dark matter. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}
- OSTI ID:
- 300157
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 81, Issue 26; Other Information: PBD: Dec 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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