Gravimeter search for compact dark matter objects moving in the Earth

Abstract

Dark matter could be composed of compact dark objects (CDOs). These objects may interact very weakly with normal matter and could move freely {\it inside} the Earth. A CDO moving in the inner core of the Earth will have an orbital period near 55 min and produce a time dependent signal in a gravimeter. Data from superconducting gravimeters rule out such objects moving inside the Earth unless their mass $m_D$ and or orbital radius $a$ are very small so that $m_{D}a<1.2\times 10^{-13}{M}_{\oplus }{R}_{\oplus }$. Here $M_{\oplus }$ and $R_{\oplus }$ are the mass and radius of the Earth.

8 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• Macro Dark Matter
• Gravitational Waves from Compact Dark Objects in Neutron Stars
• Constraining the gravitational wave energy density of the Universe using Earth's ring
• Limits on Lorentz violation in gravity from worldwide superconducting gravimeters