Search for Dark Matter Induced Airglow in Planetary Atmospheres

2024/08/27 by Anonymous, Carlos Blanco, Blanco, Carlos +6 · 2 voices
Physics and Astronomy · #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.15318

Abstract

We point out that dark matter can illuminate planetary skies via ultraviolet airglow. Dark matter annihilation products can excite molecular hydrogen, which then deexcites to produce ultraviolet emission in the Lyman and Werner bands. We search for this new effect by analyzing nightside ultraviolet radiation data from Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons flybys of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. Our findings set new constraints on the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section down to about 10^-40~cm². We highlight that future ultraviolet airglow measurements of Solar System planets or other worlds provide a new dark matter discovery avenue.

Citations

• ArXiv

Discussions

• Dark matter is the hide-and-seek champion of the cosmos! We know it's out there, but we've never been able to say "Tag! You're it!"🧪🔭 New idea: Halos of self-annihilating dark matter could be fai [bsky, 17 points, 1 comments]
• Sorry, I was busy searching for Dark Matter Induced Airglow in Planetary Atmospheres. 😵‍💫 Must admit I was a bit surprised to see so many familiar names in the references – including my own! arxiv [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]

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