Constraints on Dark Matter from the Moon

Abstract

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 comparing the rate of energy deposit by dark matter annihilations in the Moon to 12 mW/m${}^2$ as measured by the Apollo mission. For light dark matter of mass $\mathcal{O}(10)$ GeV, we also examine the possibility of dark matter annihilations in the Moon limb. In this case, we place constraints by comparing the photon flux from such annihilations to that of the Fermi-LAT measurement of $10^{-4}$ MeV/cm${}^2$s. This analysis excludes spin independent cross section $\gtrsim 10^{-37}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^2$ for dark matter mass between 30 and 50 GeV.

9 pages; v2: Improved moon models, updated references. Matches published version

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars II: Leptonic Targets
• Evaporation of dark matter from celestial bodies
• Accelerating Composite Dark Matter Discovery with Nuclear Recoils and the Migdal Effect
• Solar Gamma Ray Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation to Secluded Mediators
• Celestial Objects as Strongly-Interacting Non-Annihilating Dark Matter Detectors
• Etching Plastic Searches for Dark Matter
• Novel constraints on fifth forces and ultralight dark sector with asteroidal data
• Heating Neutron Stars with Inelastic Dark Matter and Relativistic Targets
• Pushing the frontier of WIMPy inelastic dark matter: journey to the end of the periodic table
• Constraining the spin-independent elastic scattering cross section of dark matter using the Moon as a detection target and the background neutrino data
• Constraining dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section by the background electron anti-neutrino flux data
• Capture rate of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in binary star systems
• Probing Superheavy Dark Matter with Exoplanets
• Refining Bounds for Snyder and GUP Models through Seismic Wave Analysis
• Period change of binary pulsars due to the accretion of dark matter particles