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Indirect searches for dark matter bound state formation and level transitions
by Iason Baldes, Francesca Calore, Kalliopi Petraki, Vincent Poireau, Nicholas L. Rodd
This Submission thread is now published as
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Iason Baldes · Vincent Poireau |
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| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.13787v2 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2020-10-26 |
| Date submitted: | 2020-08-07 11:37 |
| Submitted by: | Baldes, Iason |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
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Abstract
Indirect searches for dark matter (DM) have conventionally been applied to the products of DM annihilation or decay. If DM couples to light force carriers, however, it can be captured into bound states via dissipation of energy that may yield detectable signals. We extend the indirect searches to DM bound state formation and transitions between bound levels, and constrain the emission of unstable dark photons. Our results significantly refine the predicted signal flux that could be observed in experiments. As a concrete example, we use Fermi-LAT dwarf spheroidal observations to obtain constraints in terms of the dark photon mass and energy which we use to search for the formation of stable or unstable bound states.
Published as SciPost Phys. 9, 068 (2020)
Reports on this Submission
Report #1 by Anonymous (Referee 1) on 2020-10-17 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:2007.13787v2, delivered 2020-10-17, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.2090
Report
This paper put bounds on a scenario where dark matter interacts via a long range force. The microscopic framework is outlined in section 2: a dark copy of QED where the dark photon interacts with the standard model via a renormalizable Abelian kinetic mixing. In the same section the authors describe all processes, scattering and decay, relevant to indirect detection phenomenology. Section 3 explains how to recast Fermi dwarf spheroidal data; the cross section for dark bound state formation has a non-trivial velocity dependence and therefore the conventional recasting methods need some revision. Results are provided in section 4 and conclusions in section 5.
The paper is written very well and everything is explained clearly. The scenario investigated is a motivated dark matter framework and the results are interesting enough to deserve to appear in the literature. I am happy to recommend this paper for publication.