Related papers: Heating up the Galaxy with Hidden Photons
We place limits on dark matter made up of compact objects significantly heavier than a solar mass, such as MACHOs or primordial black holes (PBHs). In galaxies, the gas of such objects is generally hotter than the gas of stars and will thus…
Ionized nebulae have been targets of interest since the introduction of the telescope centuries ago. These isolated, "classical" H II regions gave us some of the earliest insight into the copious feedback energy that stars inject into the…
In anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking, superpartners in a hidden sector have masses that are proportional to couplings squared, and so naturally freeze out with the desired dark matter relic density for a large range of masses. We…
Cold interstellar gas clouds provide an exciting new method to discover dark matter. Their immense size makes them uniquely sensitive to interactions from the heaviest, most rarefied dark matter models. Using gas cloud observations, we…
Due to wave interference, an ultralight light dark matter halo has stochastic, granular substructures which can scatter stars, leading to the heating of stellar distributions. Studies of this phenomenon have placed lower bounds on the…
Gravitational microlensing has become a mature technique for discovering small gravitational lenses in the Universe which are otherwise beyond our detection limits. Similarly, plasma microlensing can help us explore cosmic plasma lenses.…
We propose a novel dark matter detection method utilizing the excitation of superconducting transmon qubits. Assuming the hidden photon dark matter of a mass of $O(10)\ \mu{\rm eV}$, the classical wave-matter oscillation induces an…
Recent suggestions of a "photon underproduction crisis" (Kollmeier \etal\ 2014) have generated concern over the intensity and spectrum of ionizing photons in the metagalactic ultraviolet background (UVB). The balance of hydrogen…
From fusion dynamics in stars, to terrestrial lightning events, to new prospects of energy production or novel light sources, hot dense plasmas are of importance for an array of physical phenomena. Due to a plethora of correlations in…
A search for hidden photon cold dark matter (HP CDM) using a new technique with a dish antenna is reported. From the result of the measurement, we found no evidence for the existence of HP CDM and set an upper limit on the photon-HP mixing…
We calculate the intergalactic photon density as a function of both energy and redshift for 0 < z < 6 for photon energies from .003 eV to the Lyman limit cutoff at 13.6 eV in a Lambda-CDM universe with $\Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.7$ and…
The existence of Dark Matter (DM) is a well established fact since many decades, thanks to the observation of the effects of its gravitational interaction with the ordinary matter in the Universe. However, our knowledge of the Dark Matter…
Dark matter exists in our Universe, but its nature remains mysterious. The remarkable sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) may be able to solve this mystery. A good dark matter candidate is the…
I show that interstellar films of material thinner than a micron, drift away from the Galactic plane as a result of stellar radiation pressure. Such films, whether produced naturally by dust coagulation in proto-planetary disks or…
A field with particularly exciting results over the past few years is the study of the interaction of cosmic rays with interstellar matter. For star formation to take place, gas and dust need to be sufficiently cold for gravity to overcome…
(abridged) The dominant thermal mechanisms in the neutral interstellar medium, which acts as a star-forming gas reservoir, are uncertain in extremely metal-poor galaxies. Our objective is to identify the heating mechanisms in one such…
We present some aspects and first results of the emission of sub-eV mass hidden photons from the Sun. The contribution from a resonant region below the photosphere can be quite significant, raising previous estimates. This is relevant for…
Gravitational potential fluctuations driven by bursty star formation can kinematically 'heat up' dark matter at the centres of dwarf galaxies. A key prediction of such models is that, at a fixed dark matter halo mass, dwarfs with a higher…
The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium is set by the balance between adiabatic cooling resulting from the expansion of the universe, and photo-heating by the UV-background. We have analysed the Lyman-alpha forest of eleven…
Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons propagating in the Galaxy produce diffuse gamma-rays via the inverse Compton (IC) process. The low energy target photon populations with which the cosmic-rays interact during propagation are produced by…