Stellar Shocks From Dark Matter Asteroid Impacts
arXiv:2106.09033 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.021101
Abstract
Macroscopic dark matter is almost unconstrained over a wide "asteroid-like" mass range, where it could scatter on baryonic matter with geometric cross section. We show that when such an object travels through a star, it produces shock waves which reach the stellar surface, leading to a distinctive transient optical, UV and X-ray emission. This signature can be searched for on a variety of stellar types and locations. In a dense globular cluster, such events occur far more often than flare backgrounds, and an existing UV telescope could probe orders of magnitude in dark matter mass in one week of dedicated observation.
13 pages, 5 figures. v2: clarifications and references added, matches journal version
References in corpus (25)
- Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
- Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Pulsating Variable Stars, Rotation, Convective Boundaries, and Energy Conservation
- WIMP Annihilation and Cooling of Neutron Stars
- The Kepler Catalog of Stellar Flares
- Compact Stars as Dark Matter Probes
- Dark Nuclei I: Cosmology and Indirect Detection
- Macro Dark Matter
- Light Dark Matter Search with a High-Resolution Athermal Phonon Detector Operated Above Ground
- Subaru through a different lens: microlensing by extended dark matter structures
- Statistical Properties of Superflares on Solar-type Stars: Results Using All of the Kepler Primary Mission Data
- Low Mass Black Holes from Dark Core Collapse
- Exoplanets as Sub-GeV Dark Matter Detectors
- Celestial-Body Focused Dark Matter Annihilation Throughout the Galaxy
- Structure Formation and Exotic Compact Objects in a Dissipative Dark Sector
- Dark Matter, Destroyer of Worlds: Neutrino, Thermal, and Existential Signatures from Black Holes in the Sun and Earth
- Optical Observations of Meteors Generating Infrasound - I: Acoustic Signal Identification and Phenomenology
- Massive Black Holes from Dissipative Dark Matter
- First asteroseismic limits on the nature of dark matter
- Tests of Dark MACHOs: Lensing, Accretion, and Glow
- Detecting Composite Dark Matter with Long Range and Contact Interactions in Gas Clouds
- The future of astronomy with small satellites
- Partial Stellar Explosions -- Ejected Mass and Minimal Energy
- Limits on the flux of nuclearites and other heavy compact objects from the "Pi of the Sky" project
- Wave-Driven Shocks in Stellar Outbursts: Dynamics, Envelope Heating, and Nascent Blastwaves
- Reconsidering seismological constraints on the available parameter space of macroscopic dark matter
Cited by in corpus (10)
- Scattering searches for dark matter in subhalos: neutron stars, cosmic rays, and old rocks
- Structure Formation after Reheating: Supermassive Primordial Black Holes and Fermi Ball Dark Matter
- Gravitational-wave Emission from a Primordial Black Hole Inspiraling inside a Compact Star: a Novel Probe for Dense Matter Equation of State
- Dark matter effect on black hole accretion disks
- Searching for Dark Clumps with Gravitational-Wave Detectors
- New Constraints on Macroscopic Dark Matter Using Radar Meteor Detectors
- Red-Giant Branch Stellar Cores as Macroscopic Dark Matter Detectors
- IceCube at the Frontier of Macroscopic Dark Matter Direct Detection
- Diffuse X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Limits on Boson Stars that Interact with Nuclei
- Secluded Dark Composites and Remnant Binding Fields