English

Macro Dark Matter

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-07-06 v5 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Dark matter is a vital component of the current best model of our universe, Λ\LambdaCDM. There are leading candidates for what the dark matter could be (e.g. weakly-interacting massive particles, or axions), but no compelling observational or experimental evidence exists to support these particular candidates, nor any beyond-the-Standard-Model physics that might produce such candidates. This suggests that other dark matter candidates, including ones that might arise in the Standard Model, should receive increased attention. Here we consider a general class of dark matter candidates with characteristic masses and interaction cross-sections characterized in units of grams and cm2^2, respectively -- we therefore dub these macroscopic objects as Macros. Such dark matter candidates could potentially be assembled out of Standard Model particles (quarks and leptons) in the early universe. A combination of Earth-based, astrophysical, and cosmological observations constrain a portion of the Macro parameter space. A large region of parameter space remains, most notably for nuclear-dense objects with masses in the range 55101755 - 10^{17} g and 2×10204×10242\times10^{20} - 4\times10^{24} g, although the lower mass window is closed for Macros that destabilize ordinary matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1410.2236,
  title  = {Macro Dark Matter},
  author = {David M. Jacobs and Glenn D. Starkman and Bryan W. Lynn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.2236},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 1 table, 4 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. v3: corrected small errors and a few points were made more clear, v4: included CMB bounds on dark matter-photon coupling from Wilkinson et al. (2014) and references added. Final revision matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:17:09.853Z