English

Atomic Dark Matter

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-05-14 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We propose that dark matter is dominantly comprised of atomic bound states. We build a simple model and map the parameter space that results in the early universe formation of hydrogen-like dark atoms. We find that atomic dark matter has interesting implications for cosmology as well as direct detection: Protohalo formation can be suppressed below Mproto103106MM_{proto} \sim 10^3 - 10^6 M_{\odot} for weak scale dark matter due to Ion-Radiation interactions in the dark sector. Moreover, weak-scale dark atoms can accommodate hyperfine splittings of order 100\kev100 \kev, consistent with the inelastic dark matter interpretation of the DAMA data while naturally evading direct detection bounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.0753,
  title  = {Atomic Dark Matter},
  author = {David E. Kaplan and Gordan Z. Krnjaic and Keith R. Rehermann and Christopher M. Wells},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0753},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

17 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:42:28.617Z