Terrestrial and martian heat flow limits on dark matter

2019/09/30 by Joseph Bramante, Andrew Buchanan, A. Goodman +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Hot dark matter #Light dark matter #Mars Exploration Program #Mixed dark matter #Particle physics #Physics #Scalar field dark matter #astro-ph.EP #hep-ex #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.101.043001

published as Phys. Rev. D 101, 043001 (2020) · 20 pages, 18 figures, PRD version

arxiv created 2020/01/20 · openalex publication_date 2020/02/05 · arxiv updated 2020/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

If dark matter is efficiently captured by a planet, energy released in its annihilation can exceed that planet's total heat output. Building on prior work, we treat Earth's composition and dark matter capture in detail and present improved limits on dark matter-nucleon scattering cross sections for dark matter masses ranging from 0.1 to 10¹⁰ GeV. We also extend Earth limits by applying the same treatment to Mars. The scope of dark matter models considered is expanded to include spin-dependent nuclear interactions including isospin-independent, proton only, and neutron only interactions. We find that Earth and Mars heating bounds are alleviated for dark matter s-wave self-annihilation cross sections \ensuremath\lesssim10^\ensuremath-44 cm².

Citations

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• Solar gamma ray constraints on dark matter annihilation to secluded mediators