2023/12/11 by Carlos Blanco, Rebecca K. Leane, Blanco, Carlos +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.06758
We present a new search for dark matter using planetary atmospheres. We point out that annihilating dark matter in planets can produce ionizing radiation, which can lead to excess production of ionospheric H3+. We apply this search strategy to the night side of Jupiter near the equator. The night side has zero solar irradiation, and low latitudes are sufficiently far from ionizing auroras, leading to an effectively background-free search. We use Cassini data on ionospheric H3+ emission collected 3 hours either side of Jovian midnight, during its flyby in 2000, and set novel constraints on the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section down to about 10-38 cm2. We also highlight that dark matter atmospheric ionization may be detected in Jovian exoplanets using future high-precision measurements of planetary spectra.