English

Dark Solar Wind

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-11-21 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We study the solar emission of light dark sector particles that self-interact strongly enough to self-thermalize. The resulting outflow behaves like a fluid which accelerates under its own thermal pressure to highly relativistic bulk velocities in the solar system. Compared to the ordinary non-interacting scenario, the local outflow has at least 103\sim 10^3 higher number density and correspondingly at least 103\sim 10^3 lower average energy per particle. We show how this generic phenomenon arises in a dark sector comprised of millicharged particles strongly self-interacting via a dark photon. The millicharged plasma wind emerging in this model has novel yet predictive signatures that encourages new experimental directions. This phenomenon demonstrates how a small step away from the simplest models can lead to radically different outcomes and thus motivates a broader search for dark sector particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.11527,
  title  = {Dark Solar Wind},
  author = {Jae Hyeok Chang and David E. Kaplan and Surjeet Rajendran and Harikrishnan Ramani and Erwin H. Tanin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.11527},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:26:04.430Z