We point out a new type of diurnal effect for the cosmic ray boosted dark matter (DM). The DM-nucleon interactions not only allow the direct detection of DM with nuclear recoils, but also allow cosmic rays to scatter with and boost the nonrelativistic DM to higher energies. If the DM-nuclei scattering cross sections are sufficiently large, the DM flux is attenuated as it propagates through the Earth, leading to a strong diurnal modulation. This diurnal modulation provides another prominent signature for the direct detection of boosted sub-GeV DM, in addition to signals with higher recoil energy.
Dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments have been setting strong limits on the DM-nucleon scattering cross section at the DM mass above a few GeV, but leave large parameter space unexplored in the low mass region. DM is likely to be scattered and boosted by relativistic cosmic rays in the expanding universe if it can generate nuclear recoils in direct detection experiments to offer observable signals. Since low energy threshold detectors using Germanium have provided good constraints on ordinary halo GeV-scale DM, it is necessary to re-analyze 102.8 kg$\times$day data in the CDEX-10 expe…
Direct detection experiments turn to lose sensitivity of searching for a sub-MeV light dark matter candidate due to the threshold of recoil energy. However, such light dark matter particles can be accelerated by energetic cosmic-rays such that they can be detected with existing detectors. We derive the constraints on the scattering of a boosted light dark matter and electron from the XENON100/1T experiment. We illustrate that the energy dependence of the cross section plays a crucial role in improving both the detection sensitivity and also the complementarity of direct detection and other exp…
We present new constraints on light dark matter boosted by cosmic rays (CRDM) using the 205.4 kg day data of the CDEX-10 experiment conducted at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. The Monte Carlo simulation package CJPL\_ESS was employed to evaluate the Earth shielding effect. Several key factors have been introduced and discussed in our CRDM analysis, including the contributions from heavier CR nuclei than proton and helium, the inhomogeneity of CR distribution, and the impact of the form factor in the Earth attenuation calculation. Our result excludes the dark matter--nucleon elastic …
Cosmic-ray boosted inelastic dark matter from neutrino-emitting active galactic nuclei
Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory（费米国家加速实验室）；University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）
Detections of non-gravitational interactions of massive dark matter (DM) with visible sector so far have given null results. The DM may communicate with the ordinary matter only through gravitational interaction. Besides, the majority of traditional direct detections have poor sensitivities for light DM because of the small recoil energy. Thanks to the high energy cosmic rays (CRs), the light DM can be boosted by scattering with CRs and thus may be detected in the ongoing experiments. In this work, we derive the exclusion limits on the cosmic ray boosted sub-GeV DM with gravitational mediator …
We study the possibility to directly detect the boosted dark matter generated from the scatterings with high energetic cosmic particles such as protons and electrons. As a concrete example, we consider the sub-GeV dark matter mediated by a $U(1)_D$ gauge boson which has mixing with $U(1)_Y$ gauge boson in the standard model. The enhanced kinetic energy of the light dark matter from the collision with the cosmic rays can recoil the target nucleus and electron in the underground direct detection experiments transferring enough energy to them to be detectable. We show the impact of BDM with exist…
Dark matter particles near the center of a blazar, after being accelerated by the elastic collisions with relativistic electrons and protons in the blazar jet, can be energetic enough to trigger detectable signals at terrestrial detectors. In this work, focusing on the blazars TXS 0506+056 and BL Lacertae, we derive novel limits on the cross section of the elastic scattering between dark matter and electrons by means of the available Super-Kamiokande data. Thanks to the large blazar-boosted dark matter flux, the limit on the dark matter-electron scattering cross section for dark matter masses …
We explore acceleration of ions in the Quark Nova (QN) scenario, where a neutron star experiences an explosive phase transition into a quark star (born in the propeller regime). In this picture, two cosmic ray components are isolated: one related to the randomized pulsar wind and the other to the propelled wind, both boosted by the ultra-relativistic Quark Nova shock. The latter component acquires energies $10^{15} {\rm eV}<E<10^{18} {\rm eV}$ while the former, boosted pulsar wind, achieves ultra-high energies $E> 10^{18.6}$ eV. The composition is dominated by ions present in the pulsar wind i…
Light halo dark matter (DM) particles up-scattered by high-energy cosmic rays (referred to as CRDM) can be energetic and become detectable at conventional DM and neutrino experiments. We show that the CRDM flux has a novel and detectable morphological feature. Unlike most of the recently proposed boosted DM (BDM) models which predict azimuthally symmetric DM fluxes around the Galactic Center, the CRDM flux breaks the azimuthal symmetry significantly. Using cosmic-ray electron distribution in the whole Galaxy and optimized search region in the sky according to the morphology of the CRDM flux, w…
We explore the possibility that relativistic protons in the extremely powerful jets of blazars may boost via elastic collisions the dark matter particles in the surroundings of the source to high energies. We concentrate on two sample blazars, TXS 0506+056 - towards which IceCube recently reported evidence for a high-energy neutrino flux - and BL Lacertae, a representative nearby blazar. We find that the dark matter flux at Earth induced by these sources may be sizable, larger than the flux associated with the analogous process of dark matter boosted by galactic cosmic rays, and relevant to ac…
Cosmic Ray Boosted Dark Matter in COSINUS: Modeling and Constraints
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik（马克斯·普朗克物理研究所）；Marietta-Blau-Institut für Teilchenphysik der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften（奥地利科学院玛丽塔·布劳粒子物理研究所）；Atominstitut, Technische Universität Wien（维也纳工业大学原子研究所）；INFN - Sezione di Roma（罗马国家核物理研究所分部）；Gran Sasso Science Institute（格兰萨索科学研究所）；INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso（格兰萨索国家实验室）；Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche e Chimiche, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila（阿奎拉大学物理与化学系）
The interaction properties of cold dark matter (CDM) particle candidates, such as those of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), generically lead to the structuring of dark matter on scales much smaller than typical galaxies, potentially down to $\sim 10^{-10}M_\odot$. This clustering translates into a very large population of subhalos in galaxies and affects the predictions for direct and indirect dark matter searches (gamma rays and antimatter cosmic rays). In this paper, we elaborate on previous analytic works to model the Galactic subhalo population, while consistently with current…
Indirect dark matter (DM) detection typically involves the observation of standard model (SM) particles emerging from DM annihilation/decay inside regions of high dark matter concentration. We consider an annihilation scenario in which this reaction has to be initiated by one of the DMs involved being boosted while the other is an ambient non-relativistic particle. This "trigger" DM must be created, for example, in a previous annihilation or decay of a heavier component of DM. Remarkably, boosted DM annihilating into gamma-rays at a specific point in a galaxy could actually have traveled from …
The direct detection of cosmic neutrino background (CNB) has been a longstanding challenge in particle physics, due to its low number density and tiny neutrino masses. In this work, we consider the spectrum of the CNB boosted by cosmic rays via the neutrino self-interaction, and calculate the event rate of the boosted CNB-plasmon scattering in term of the dielectric response, which accounts for in-medium screening effect of a condensed matter target. This can be taken as the new direct detection strategy for the CNB in complementary to the traditional one, which captures the CNB on a $β$-unsta…
In this work we develop a new propagation model for the Galactic cosmic rays based on the GALPROP code, including contributions from dark matter annihilation. The model predicts compatible Galactic diffuse $γ$ ray spectra with EGRET data in all sky regions. It also gives consistent results of the diffuse $γ$ ray longitude and latitude distributions. Further the results for B/C, $^{10}$Be/$^9$Be, proton, electron and antiproton spectra are also consistent with cosmic ray measurements. In the model we have taken a universal proton spectrum throughout the Galaxy without introducing large fluctuat…
If dark matter has mass lower than around 1 GeV, it will not impart enough energy to cause detectable nuclear recoils in many direct-detection experiments. However, if dark matter is upscattered to high energy by collisions with cosmic rays, it may be detectable in both direct-detection experiments and neutrino experiments. We report the results of a dedicated search for boosted dark matter upscattered by cosmic rays using the PROSPECT reactor antineutrino experiment. We show that such a flux of upscattered dark matter would display characteristic diurnal sidereal modulation, and use this to s…
We consider the production of a "fast flux" of hypothetical millicharged particles (mCPs) in the interstellar medium (ISM). We consider two possible sources induced by cosmic rays: (a) $pp\rightarrow$(meson)$\rightarrow$(mCP) which adds to atmospheric production of mCPs, and (b) cosmic-ray up-scattering on a millicharged component of dark matter. We notice that the galactic magnetic fields retain mCPs for a long time, leading to an enhancement of the fast flux by many orders of magnitude. In both scenarios, we calculate the expected signal for direct dark matter detection aimed at electron rec…
We suggest that ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays (CRs) may be accelerated in ultra-relativistic flows via a one-shot mechanism, the "espresso" acceleration, in which already-energetic particles are generally boosted by a factor of $\simΓ^2$ in energy, where $Γ$ is the flow Lorentz factor. More precisely, we consider blazar-like jets with $Γ\gtrsim 30$ propagating into a halo of "seed" CRs produced in supernova remnants, which can accelerate UHECRs up to $10^{20}$\,eV. Such a re-acceleration process naturally accounts for the chemical composition measured by the Pierre Auger Collaboration, w…
It is commonly assumed that high-energy gamma-rays are made via either purely electromagnetic processes or the hadronic process of pion production, followed by decay. We investigate astrophysical contexts where a third process (A*) may dominate, namely the photo-disintegration of highly boosted nuclei followed by daughter de-excitation. Starbust regions such as Cygnus OB2 appear to be promising sites for TeV gamma-ray emission via this mechanism. A unique feature of the A* process is a sharp energy minimum ~ 10 TeV/(T/eV) for gamma-ray emission from a thermal region of temperature T. We also c…
We show that the event excess observed by the IceCube collaboration at TeV--PeV energies, usually interpreted as evidence for astrophysical neutrinos, can be explained alternatively by the scattering of highly boosted dark matter particles. Specifically, we consider a scenario where a $\sim 4$ PeV scalar dark matter particle $ϕ$ can decay to a much lighter dark fermion $χ$, which in turn scatters off nuclei in the IceCube detector. Besides these events, which are exclusively shower-like, the model also predicts a secondary population of events at $\mathcal{O}(100 \text{TeV})$ originating from …
Light sub-GeV halo dark matter (DM) particles up-scattered by high-energy cosmic-rays (CRs) (referred to as CRDM) can be energetic and become detectable by conventional DM direct detection experiments. We perform a refined analysis on the exclusion bounds of the spin-independent DM-nucleon scattering cross section $σ_{χp}$ in this approach. For the exclusion lower bounds, we determine the parameter of the effective distance $D_\text{eff}$ for CRDM production using spatial-dependent CR fluxes and including the contributions from the major heavy CR nuclear species. We obtain $D_\text{eff}\simeq …
Probing Cosmic-Ray-Boosted and Supernova-Sourced Sub-GeV Dark Matter with Paleo-Detectors
International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific (ICTP-AP), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（国际理论物理中心亚太分部，中国科学院大学）；Key Laboratory of DM and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（暗物质与空间天文重点实验室，中国科学院紫金山天文台）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文与空间科学学院）；Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Physics, Nanjing Normal University（南京师范大学物理系和理论物理研究所）
It has been proposed that Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) up to $10^{20}$eV could be produced in the relativistic jets of powerful Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) via a one-shot reacceleration of lower-energy CRs produced in supernova remnants (the $\textit{espresso}$ mechanism). We test this theory by propagating particles in realistic 3D magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of ultra-relativistic jets and find that about $10\%$ of the CRs entering the jet are boosted by at least a factor of $\simΓ^2$ in energy, where $Γ$ is the jet's effective Lorentz factor, in agreement with the analytical…
Cosmic rays with energies beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin `cutoff' at $\sim 4 \times 10^{10}$ GeV pose a conundrum, the solution of which requires either drastic revision of our astrophysical understanding, or new physics beyond the Standard Model. Nucleons of such energies must originate within the local supercluster in order to avoid excessive energy losses through photopion production on the cosmic microwave background. However they do not point back towards possible nearby sources, e.g. the active galaxy Cen A or M87 in the Virgo cluster, so such an astrophysical origin requires interga…
In this Letter, we study the gamma-ray signatures subsequent to the production of a Higgs boson in space by dark matter annihilations. We investigate the cases where the Higgs boson is produced at rest or slightly boosted and show that such configurations can produce characteristic bumps in the gamma-ray data. These results are relevant in the case of the Standard Model-like Higgs boson provided that the dark matter mass is about 63 GeV, 109 GeV or 126 GeV, but can be generalised to any other Higgs boson masses. Here, we point out that it may be worth looking for a 63 GeV line since it could b…
The Cosmic Neutrino Background is within Reach of Future Neutrino Telescopes
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）；Institute of Science Tokyo（东京科学大学）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）
The observation of cosmic--ray events above the Greisen-Kuzmin-Zatsepin (GZK) cutoff of $\sim 5\times 10^{19}$ eV challenges orthodox modeling. We discuss a possible solution which uses standard hot Big Bang cosmology and Standard Model (SM) particle physics augmented only by $\lsim $ eV neutrino masses as suggested by solar, atmospheric, and terrestrial neutrino detection. In this scheme, cosmic ray neutrinos from distant, highest-energy sources annihilate resonantly on the relic-neutrino background to produce Z-bosons. The highly-boosted ($γ_Z\sim 10^{11}$) Z's instantly decay, producing "Z-…
GeV-scale dark matter particles with strong coupling to baryons evade the standard direct detection limits as they are efficiently stopped in the overburden and, consequently, are not able to reach the underground detectors. On the other hand, it has been shown that it is possible to probe this parameter space taking into account the flux of dark matter particles boosted by interactions with cosmic rays. We revisit these bounds paying particular attention to interactions of the relativistic dark matter particles in the Earth's crust. The effects of nuclear form factors, inelastic scattering an…
We discuss challenges to a dark matter annihilation interpretation of the excess positron fraction in the cosmic rays observed by the PAMELA, Fermi-LAT and AMS-02 collaborations. The spectra of positrons from annihilations into the leptonic two-body final states like $τ^+ τ^-$ or $μ^+ μ^-$, fit well the AMS-02 data for the positron ratio and the electron flux. Furthermore, we discuss the hadronic annihilation channels $b \bar{b}$ and $W^+ W^-$. However, this interpretation requires a very large annihilation cross section especially for the hadronic channels, conflicting with the unitarity uppe…
An excess in gamma-rays from the galactic center observed by the Fermi Large Area Telescope has been proposed as a possible signal of dark matter annihilation. Recently, the Fermi collaboration showed that systematic errors broaden the range of spectral shapes for this excess. We demonstrate fits to this range for (1) flavor-violating annihilations to top-charm pairs and (2) annihilations to on-shell bosonic mediators which decay to Standard Model quarks in a boosted frame. Annihilation of 40 - 100 GeV DM to pairs of spin-1 mediators provide a good fit to the Fermi-LAT spectrum with a normaliz…
We explore, within the warped extra dimensional framework, the possibility of finding anti-matter signals in cosmic rays (CRs) from dark matter (DM) annihilation. Exchange of order 100 GeV radion, an integral part of our setup, generically results in Sommerfeld enhancement of the annihilation rate for TeV DM mass. No dark sector is required to obtain boosted annihilation cross sections. A mild hierarchy between the radion and DM masses can be natural due to the pseudo-Goldstone boson nature of the radion. Implications of Sommerfeld enhancement in warped grand unified theory (GUT) models, where…
Neutralino annihilation in the Galactic halo is the most definite observational signature proposed for indirect registration of the SUSY Dark Matter (DM) candidate particles. The corresponding annihilation signal (in the form of gamma-rays, positrons and antiprotons) may be boosted for one or three orders of magnitude due to the clustering of cold DM particles into the small-scale and very dense self-gravitating clumps. We discuss the formation of these clumps from the initial density perturbations and their successive fate in the Galactic halo. Only a small fraction of these clumps, $\sim0.1$…
