Supernova signals of light dark matter

Dark matter direct detection experiments have poor sensitivity to a galactic population of dark matter with mass below the GeV scale. However, such dark matter can be produced copiously in supernovae. Since this thermally produced population is much hotter than the galactic dark matter, it can be ob...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D 2019-10, Vol.100 (7), p.075018-1, Article 075018
Main Authors: DeRocco, William, Graham, Peter W., Kasen, Daniel, Marques-Tavares, Gustavo, Rajendran, Surjeet
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Constraint modelling
Cooling
Coupling
Dark matter
Experiments
Fermions
Supernovae
Xenon
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Dark matter direct detection experiments have poor sensitivity to a galactic population of dark matter with mass below the GeV scale. However, such dark matter can be produced copiously in supernovae. Since this thermally produced population is much hotter than the galactic dark matter, it can be observed with direct detection experiments. In this paper, we focus on a dark sector with fermion dark matter and a heavy dark photon as a specific example. We first extend existing supernova cooling constraints on this model to the regime of strong coupling where the dark matter becomes diffusively trapped in the supernova. Then, using the fact that even outside these cooling constraints the diffuse galactic flux of these dark sector particles can still be large, we show that this flux is detectable in direct detection experiments such as current and next-generation liquid xenon detectors. As a result, due to supernova production, light dark matter has the potential to be discovered over many orders of magnitude of mass and coupling.
ISSN:2470-0010
2470-0029
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.100.075018