English

CHAMP Cosmic Rays

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-07-12 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Experiment High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We study interactions of cosmological relics, XX, of mass mm and electric charge qeqe in the galaxy, including thermalization with the interstellar medium, diffusion through inhomogeneous magnetic fields and Fermi acceleration by supernova shock waves. We find that for m<1010q   GeVm \mathop{}_{\textstyle \sim}^{\textstyle <} 10^{10} q \; ~{\rm GeV}, there is a large flux of accelerated XX in the disk today, with a momentum distribution 1/p2.5\propto 1/p^{2.5} extending to (βp)max5×104q   GeV(\beta p)_{max} \sim 5 \times10^4 q \; ~{\rm GeV}. Even though acceleration in supernova shocks is efficient, ejecting XX from the galaxy, XX are continually replenished by diffusion into the disk from the halo or confinement region. For m>1010q   GeVm \mathop{}_{\textstyle \sim}^{\textstyle >} 10^{10} q \; ~{\rm GeV}, XX cannot be accelerated above the escape velocity within the lifetime of the shock. The accelerated XX form a component of cosmic rays that can easily reach underground detectors, as well as deposit energies above thresholds, enhancing signals in various experiments. We find that nuclear/electron recoil experiments place very stringent bounds on XX at low qq; for example, XX as dark matter is excluded for qq above 10910^{-9} for any mm. For larger qq, stringent bounds on the fraction of dark matter that can be XX are set by Cherenkov and ionization detectors. Nevertheless, very small qq is highly motivated by the kinetic mixing portal, and we identify regions of (m,q)(m,q) that can be probed by future experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.11116,
  title  = {CHAMP Cosmic Rays},
  author = {David Dunsky and Lawrence J. Hall and Keisuke Harigaya},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.11116},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

56 pages, 20 figures. Matches published version. Added discussion on EDGES result, clarifications, and references