CHAMP Cosmic Rays

Abstract

We study interactions of cosmological relics, $X$, of mass $m$ and electric charge $qe$ in the galaxy, including thermalization with the interstellar medium, diffusion through inhomogeneous magnetic fields and Fermi acceleration by supernova shock waves. We find that for $m{}_{\sim }^{<}10^{10}q\mathrm{GeV}$, there is a large flux of accelerated $X$ in the disk today, with a momentum distribution $\propto 1/p^{2.5}$ extending to $(\beta p{)}_{max}\sim 5\times 10^{4}q\mathrm{GeV}$. Even though acceleration in supernova shocks is efficient, ejecting $X$ from the galaxy, $X$ are continually replenished by diffusion into the disk from the halo or confinement region. For $m{}_{\sim }^{>}10^{10}q\mathrm{GeV}$, $X$ cannot be accelerated above the escape velocity within the lifetime of the shock. The accelerated $X$ form a component of cosmic rays that can easily reach underground detectors, as well as deposit energies above thresholds, enhancing signals in various experiments. We find that nuclear/electron recoil experiments place very stringent bounds on $X$ at low $q$; for example, $X$ as dark matter is excluded for $q$ above $10^{-9}$ for any $m$. For larger $q$, stringent bounds on the fraction of dark matter that can be $X$ are set by Cherenkov and ionization detectors. Nevertheless, very small $q$ is highly motivated by the kinetic mixing portal, and we identify regions of $(m,q)$ that can be probed by future experiments.

56 pages, 20 figures. Matches published version. Added discussion on EDGES result, clarifications, and references

References in corpus (6)

• The Vertical Structure of Warm Ionised Gas in the Milky Way
• Turning off the Lights: How Dark is Dark Matter?
• Through Thick and Thin - HI Absorption in Cosmological Simulations
• Reopening the window on charged dark matter
• Destruction of Interstellar Dust in Evolving Supernova Remnant Shock Waves
• Dark Cosmic Rays

Cited by in corpus (30)

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• New Constraints on Millicharged Particles from Cosmic-ray Production
• Constraints on millicharged dark matter and axion-like particles from timing of radio waves
• The cosmology of sub-MeV dark matter freeze-in
• Gas-rich dwarf galaxies as a new probe of dark matter interactions with ordinary matter
• FORMOSA: Looking Forward to Millicharged Dark Sectors
• Solar Reflection of Dark Matter
• A Dark Matter Interpretation of Excesses in Multiple Direct Detection Experiments
• Direct Detection of Bound States of Asymmetric Dark Matter
• Millicharged Cosmic Rays and Low Recoil Detectors
• Les Houches Lectures on Indirect Detection of Dark Matter
• New Limits on Charged Dark Matter from Large-Scale Coherent Magnetic Fields
• Direct Deflection of Particle Dark Matter
• Dynamics of millicharged dark matter in supernova remnants
• Dark Matter, Dark Radiation and Gravitational Waves from Mirror Higgs Parity
• Long range dark matter self-interactions and plasma instabilities
• Composite Dark Matter from Strongly-Interacting Chiral Dynamics
• Constraints on Dark Matter-Electron Scattering from Molecular Cloud Ionization
• White Dwarf Bounds on CHAMPs
• Dark Matter from Monogem
• Detecting Dark Matter with Aharonov-Bohm
• Meson production in air showers and the search for light exotic particles
• WIMP and FIMP dark matter in the inert doublet plus singlet model
• A composite solution to the EDGES anomaly
• Fractionally Charged Particles at the Energy Frontier: The SM Gauge Group and One-Form Global Symmetry
• Possible s-wave annihilation for MeV dark matter with the 21-cm absorption
• Boosting Asymmetric Charged DM via Thermalization
• Reacceleration of charged dark matter
• Dark matter scattering in astrophysical media: collective effects
• Constraints on millicharged particles from nuclear gamma-decays