Related papers: Uranus's anomalously low excess heat constrains st…
If dark matter is efficiently captured by a planet, energy released in its annihilation can exceed that planet's total heat output. Building on prior work, we treat Earth's composition and dark matter capture in detail and present improved…
We suggest that accretion of planet-bound dark matter by the Jovian planets, and by hot-Jupiter exoplanets, could be a significant source of their internal heat. The anomalously low internal heat of Uranus would then be explained if the…
Dark Matter annihilations after recombination and during the epoch of structure formation deposit energy in the primordial intergalactic medium, producing reionization and heating. We investigate the constraints that are imposed by the…
Thermal dark matter that couples more strongly to electrons and photons than to neutrinos will heat the electron-photon plasma relative to the neutrino background if it becomes nonrelativistic after the neutrinos decouple from the thermal…
Model-independent theoretical upper bound on the thermal dark matter (DM) mass can be derived from the maximum inelastic DM cross-section featuring the whole observed DM abundance. We deploy partial-wave unitarity of the scattering matrix…
Using the upper bound on the inelastic reaction cross-section implied by S-matrix unitarity, we derive the thermally averaged maximum dark matter (DM) annihilation rate for general $k \rightarrow 2$ number-changing reactions, with $k \geq…
Radio observations of the Ursa Major II dwarf spheroidal galaxy obtained using the Green Bank Telescope are used to place bounds on WIMP dark matter properties. Dark matter annihilation releases energy in the form of charged particles which…
New and complimentary constraints are placed on the spin-independent interactions of dark matter with baryonic matter. Similar to the Earth and other planets, the Moon does not have any major internal heat source. We derive constraints by…
Using data from the $\nu$-cleus detector, based on the surface of the Earth, we place constraints on dark matter in the form of Strongly Interacting Massive Particles (SIMPs) which interact with nucleons via nuclear-scale cross sections.…
The relic abundance of thermal dark matter particles is generally assumed to be inversely proportional to their annihilation rate, which is therefore constrained by the present matter density, <sigma v> ~ 10^{-26} Omega_{dm}^{-1} cm^3…
Dark matter is approximately five times more abundant than baryonic matter in the universe, but its physical nature continues to elude physicists. One potential candidate for dark matter is a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP),…
We summarize here our studies \cite{Chu:2022xuh,Chu:2023jyb,Chu:2024rrv} on two distinct scenarios for MeV-mass thermal dark matter freeze-out. First, we determine the minimal viable mass for dark matter below tens of MeV, considering…
Dark matter annihilation into charged particles is necessarily accompanied by gamma rays, produced via radiative corrections. Internal bremsstrahlung from the final state particles can produce hard gamma rays up to the dark matter mass,…
How large can the dark matter self-annihilation rate in the late universe be? This rate depends on (rho_DM/m_chi)^2 <sigma_A v>, where rho_DM/m_chi is the number density of dark matter, and the annihilation cross section is averaged over…
The cosmic microwave background provides constraints on the annihilation and decay of light dark matter at redshifts between 100 and 1000, the strength of which depends upon the fraction of energy ending up in the form of electrons and…
Thermal production of light dark matter with sub-GeV scale mass can be attributed to $3\rightarrow 2$ self-annihilation processes. We consider the thermal average for annihilation cross sections of dark matter at $3\rightarrow 2$ and…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) have long reigned as one of the leading classes of dark matter candidates. The observed dark matter abundance can be naturally obtained by freezeout of weak-scale dark matter annihilations in the…
Galaxy formation requires a process that continually heats gas and quenches star formation in order to reproduce the observed shape of the luminosity function of bright galaxies. To accomplish this, current models invoke heating from…
We derive constraints on parameters of generic dark matter candidates by comparing theoretical predictions with the gamma-ray emission observed by the Fermi-LAT from the region around the Galactic Center. Our analysis is conservative since…
The combination of S-matrix unitarity and the dynamics of thermal freeze-out for massive relic particles (denoted here simply by WIMPs) implies a lower limit on the density of such particles, that provide a (potentially sub-dominant)…