Exploring the astrophysics of dark atoms

Ghalsasi, Akshay; McQuinn, Matthew

doi:10.1103/physrevd.97.123018

Cited by 28 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 68 publications

(127 reference statements)

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“…Small mass splittings between states, similar to those we consider, could also be present in the context of atomic dark matter (e.g. Kaplan et al 2010;Fan et al 2013;Foot & Vagnozzi 2015;Choquette & Cline 2015;Ghalsasi & McQuinn 2018), non-Abelian dark sectors where the dark matter is part of a nearly-degenerate multiplet of states (e.g. Chen et al 2009;Cirelli & Cline 2010), or in scenarios where the DM forms stable bound states (e.g.…”

Section: Inelastic Sidm Modelsupporting

confidence: 67%

Evaporating the Milky Way halo and its satellites with inelastic self-interacting dark matter

Vogelsberger

Zavala

Schutz

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Self-interacting dark matter provides a promising alternative for the cold dark matter paradigm to solve potential small-scale galaxy formation problems. Nearly all self-interacting dark matter simulations so far have considered only elastic collisions. Here we present simulations of a galactic halo within a generic inelastic model using a novel numerical implementation in the AREPO code to study arbitrary multi-state inelastic dark matter scenarios. For this model we find that inelastic self-interactions can: (i) create larger subhalo density cores compared to elastic models for the same cross section normalisation; (ii) lower the abundance of satellites without the need for a power spectrum cutoff; (iii) reduce the total halo mass by about 10%; (iv) inject the energy equivalent of O(100) million Type II supernovae in galactic haloes through level de-excitation; (v) avoid the gravothermal catastrophe due to removal of particles from halo centres. We conclude that a ∼ 5 times larger elastic cross section is required to achieve the same central density reduction as the inelastic model. This implies that wellestablished constraints on self-interacting cross sections have to be revised if inelastic collisions are the dominant mode. In this case significantly smaller cross sections can achieve the same core density reduction thereby increasing the parameter space of allowed models considerably.

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Section: Inelastic Sidm Modelsupporting

confidence: 67%

Evaporating the Milky Way halo and its satellites with inelastic self-interacting dark matter

Vogelsberger

Zavala

Schutz

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…Also, a disk may be formed by accretion of dark electrons into the baryonic potential [93][94][95]. In the presence of mergers, though, the disk may be disrupted [60,78], and the final halo distribution may be spheroidal.…”

Section: A Dark-electron Halo With Angular Momentummentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure formation and exotic compact objects in a dissipative dark sector

Chang

Egaña-Ugrinovic

Essig

et al. 2019

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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We present the complete history of structure formation in a simple dissipative dark-sector model. The model has only two particles: a dark electron, which is a subdominant component of dark matter, and a dark photon. Dark-electron perturbations grow from primordial overdensities, become non-linear, and form dense dark galaxies. Bremsstrahlung cooling leads to fragmentation of the dark-electron halos into clumps that vary in size from a few to millions of solar masses, depending on the particle model parameters. In particular, we show that asymmetric dark stars and black holes form within the Milky Way from the collapse of dark electrons. These exotic compact objects may be detected and their properties measured at new high-precision astronomical observatories, giving insight into the particle nature of the dark sector without the requirement of non-gravitational interactions with the visible sector.

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“…From this perspective, our paper represents a detailed study of the direct detection signals of generalized mirror-like models in the region of parameter space motivated by the little hierarchy problem. From an even more general perspective, mirror DM models in all their incarnations fall into the broader class of atomic DM models [82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95]. Since the motivations for the existence of a small dark photon kinetic mixing portal apply just as well to any atomic DM model, these theories could therefore give rise to similar signals in direct detection experiments.…”

Section: Jhep11(2021)198mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We find that in the inner regions of the galaxy, the cooling timescale from atomic processes can be less than the age of the universe. In principle molecular cooling processes can also play a role [92], but given the high degree of ionization in the mirror halo, we neglect them in our simple analysis.…”

Section: Jhep11(2021)198mentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct detection of mirror matter in Twin Higgs models

Chacko

Curtin

Geller

et al. 2021

J. High Energ. Phys.

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We explore the possibility of discovering the mirror baryons and electrons of the Mirror Twin Higgs model in direct detection experiments, in a scenario in which these particles constitute a subcomponent of the observed DM. We consider a framework in which the mirror fermions are sub-nano-charged, as a consequence of kinetic mixing between the photon and its mirror counterpart. We consider both nuclear recoil and electron recoil experiments. The event rates depend on the fraction of mirror DM that is ionized, and also on its distribution in the galaxy. Since mirror DM is dissipative, at the location of the Earth it may be in the form of a halo or may have collapsed into a disk, depending on the cooling rate. For a given mirror DM abundance we determine the expected event rates in direct detection experiments for the limiting cases of an ionized halo, an ionized disk, an atomic halo and an atomic disk. We find that by taking advantage of the complementarity of the different experiments, it may be possible to establish not just the multi-component nature of mirror dark matter, but also its distribution in the galaxy. In addition, a study of the recoil energies may be able to determine the masses and charges of the constituents of the mirror sector. By showing that the mass and charge of mirror helium are integer multiples of those of mirror hydrogen, these experiments have the potential to distinguish the mirror nature of the theory. We also carefully consider mirror plasma screening effects, showing that the capture of mirror dark matter particles in the Earth has at most a modest effect on direct detection signals.

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Exploring the astrophysics of dark atoms

Cited by 28 publications

References 68 publications

Evaporating the Milky Way halo and its satellites with inelastic self-interacting dark matter

Evaporating the Milky Way halo and its satellites with inelastic self-interacting dark matter

Structure formation and exotic compact objects in a dissipative dark sector

Direct detection of mirror matter in Twin Higgs models

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