2020/09/24 by Cosmin Ilie, Caleb Levy, Ilie, Cosmin +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2009.11478
openalex publication_date 2020/09/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that the mere observation of the first stars (Pop III stars) in the universe can be used to place tight constraints on the strength of the interaction between dark matter and regular, baryonic matter. We apply this technique to a candidate Pop III stellar complex discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope at z ∼ 7 and find bounds that are competitive with, or even stronger than, current direct detection experiments, such as XENON1T, for dark matter particles with mass (mX) larger than about 100 GeV. We also show that the discovery of sufficiently massive Pop III stars could be used to bypass the main limitations of direct detection experiments: the neutrino background to which they will be soon sensitive.