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Direct Detection Constraints on Blazar-Boosted Dark Matter
Jin-Wei Wang1, Alessandro Granelli1, Piero Ullio1
1Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy; INFN, Sezione di Trieste, via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy; and Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe (IFPU), via Beirut 2, 34151 Trieste, Italy.
Physical Review Letters
|June 17, 2022
Summary
Relativistic protons in blazar jets may boost dark matter particles to high energies. This could enable direct detection of light dark matter, with new limits set by current experiments.
Area of Science:
- Astrophysics
- Particle Physics
- Cosmology
Background:
- Blazars are active galactic nuclei with powerful relativistic jets.
- Dark matter interactions are crucial for understanding the universe's composition.
- High-energy astrophysical phenomena may provide unique windows into dark matter properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate dark matter particle acceleration by relativistic protons in blazar jets.
- To assess the potential for detecting boosted dark matter at Earth.
- To derive constraints on dark matter properties using existing experimental data.
Main Methods:
- Simulating elastic collisions between relativistic protons and dark matter particles.
- Analyzing dark matter flux from blazar sources TXS 0506+056 and BL Lacertae.
- Applying null detection results from XENON1T, MiniBooNE, and Borexino experiments.
Main Results:
- Blazar jets can induce a sizable dark matter flux at Earth.
- This flux may exceed that from galactic cosmic ray-boosted dark matter.
- The process is relevant for direct detection of dark matter particles lighter than 1 GeV.
Conclusions:
- New limits on dark matter-nucleus cross sections (spin-independent and spin-dependent) are established.
- These limits significantly improve existing bounds for light dark matter candidates (1-5 orders of magnitude).
- Blazar-boosted dark matter offers a promising avenue for future direct detection experiments.
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