Probing below the neutrino floor with the first generation of stars

Abstract

We show that the mere observation of the first stars (Pop III stars) in the universe can be used to place tight constraints on the strength of the interaction between dark matter and regular, baryonic matter. We apply this technique to a candidate Pop III stellar complex discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope at $z\sim 7$ and find bounds that are competitive with, or even stronger than, current direct detection experiments, such as XENON1T, for dark matter particles with mass ($m_X$) larger than about $100$ GeV. We also show that the discovery of sufficiently massive Pop III stars could be used to bypass the main limitations of direct detection experiments: the neutrino background to which they will be soon sensitive.

7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PRL; Revised version. Summary of changes done: we included an analysis bounds on the proton-DM scattering cross sections for the CoSIMP sub-GeV thermal dark matter model; we expanded on our discussion of the dark matter densities in the environments in which Pop~III stars form; we present an approximation of the evaporation rate of DM from PopIII stars

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Improved Treatment of Dark Matter Capture in Neutron Stars III: Nucleon and Exotic Targets
• Tidal Love Numbers of Novel and Admixed Celestial Objects
• Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Ultraheavy particle dark matter
• Constraining Dark Matter properties with the first generation of stars
• Optimal Celestial Bodies for Dark Matter Detection
• Premature Black Hole Death of Population III Stars by Dark Matter
• Dark Matter (H)eats Young Planets
• Analytic Approximations for the Velocity Suppression of Dark Matter Capture