Boosted Dark Matter from Sagittarius A$^\star$
Abstract
It was recently demonstrated that black hole binaries can gravitationally accelerate ambient dark matter (DM), producing a continuous flux of particles with velocities far exceeding those of the galactic halo. We extend this analysis to the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, where stellar-mass black holes are expected to orbit in close proximity to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A. Using numerical simulations, we compute the flux of gravitationally-boosted DM sourced by this region. Because of the high DM density and large population of black holes orbiting deep within Sagittarius A's gravitational potential, the resulting DM ejecta attain substantially higher rates and energies compared to galactic black hole binaries, with simulated particles reaching velocities of up to . We find that the nuclear star cluster is therefore the dominant source of gravitationally-boosted DM in the Milky Way. Even under conservative assumptions about the DM profile in the inner galaxy, the ejected DM flux from this region can render large-volume DM detectors competitive with lower-threshold experiments in the sub-GeV mass range, independently of the underlying DM particle model. The gravitational nature of the boost also opens up a sizable detection window into heavy inelastic DM scenarios that are otherwise largely inaccessible to conventional halo DM searches.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2606.30724,
title = {Boosted Dark Matter from Sagittarius A$^\star$},
author = {Javier F. Acevedo and Adam Ritz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.30724},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
34 pages, 9 figures