Updated cosmological constraints on Macroscopic Dark Matter

Abstract

We revise the cosmological phenomenology of Macroscopic Dark Matter (MDM) candidates, also commonly dubbed as Macros. A possible signature of MDM is the capture of baryons from the cosmological plasma in the pre-recombination epoch, with the consequent injection of high-energy photons in the baryon-photon plasma. By keeping a phenomenological approach, we consider two broad classes of MDM in which Macros are composed either of ordinary matter or antimatter. In both scenarios, we also analyze the impact of a non-vanishing electric charge carried by Macros. We derive constraints on the Macro parameter space from three cosmological processes: the change in the baryon density between the end of the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) decoupling, the production of spectral distortions in the CMB and the kinetic coupling between charged MDM and baryons at the time of recombination. In the case of neutral Macros we find that the tightest constraints are set by the baryon density condition in most of the parameter space. For Macros composed of ordinary matter and with binding energy $I$, this leads to the following bound on the reduced cross-section: ${\sigma }_X/M_X\lesssim 6.8\cdot 10^{-7}{\left(I/\mathrm{MeV}\right)}^{-1.56}{\text{cm}}^2{\text{g}}^{-1}$. Charged Macros with surface potential $V_X$, instead, are mainly constrained by the tight coupling with baryons, resulting in ${\sigma }_X/M_X\lesssim 2\cdot 10^{-11}{\left(|V_X|/\mathrm{MeV}\right)}^{-2}{\text{cm}}^2{\text{g}}^{-1}$. Finally, we show that future CMB spectral distortions experiments, like PIXIE and SuperPIXIE, would have the sensitivity to probe larger regions of the parameter space: this would allow either for a possible evidence or for an improvement of the current bounds on Macros as dark matter candidates.

arXiv comment25 pages, 10 figures

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