Stellar Shocks from Dark Matter Asteroid Impacts.

Area of Science:

• Astrophysics
• Particle Physics
• Cosmology

Background:

• Macroscopic dark matter remains largely unconstrained in the
• asteroidlike
• mass range.
• Such dark matter could interact with baryonic matter via scattering with a geometric cross section.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel observational signature for detecting macroscopic dark matter.
• To investigate the potential of using stellar transient emissions as a probe for dark matter.

Main Methods:

• Simulating the passage of macroscopic dark matter objects through stars.
• Analyzing the resulting shock waves and their emission signatures (optical, UV, X-ray).
• Evaluating the feasibility of detecting these signatures with existing telescopes, particularly in dense stellar environments like globular clusters.

Main Results:

• The passage of macroscopic dark matter through a star generates shock waves that produce distinctive transient optical, UV, and X-ray emissions.
• These transient events can be observed across various stellar types and locations.
• In dense globular clusters, the predicted event rate significantly exceeds background flare events.

Conclusions:

• The proposed stellar emission signature provides a viable method for searching for macroscopic dark matter.
• Dedicated observations with existing UV telescopes could constrain orders of magnitude of dark matter mass within a week.
• This research opens new avenues for dark matter detection beyond traditional methods.