English

Constraining a Thin Dark Matter Disk with Gaia

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2018-09-03 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

If a component of the dark matter has dissipative interactions, it could collapse to form a thin dark disk in our Galaxy that is coplanar with the baryonic disk. It has been suggested that dark disks could explain a variety of observed phenomena, including periodic comet impacts. Using the first data release from the GaiaGaia space observatory, we search for a dark disk via its effect on stellar kinematics in the Milky Way. Our new limits disfavor the presence of a thin dark matter disk, and we present updated measurements on the total matter density in the Solar neighborhood.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.03103,
  title  = {Constraining a Thin Dark Matter Disk with Gaia},
  author = {Katelin Schutz and Tongyan Lin and Benjamin R. Safdi and Chih-Liang Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.03103},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

7+19 pages, 2+18 figures. v2: updated to reflect version published in PRL with minor revisions (no change to conclusions)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:40:19.521Z