A new solar system dark matter population of weakly interacting massive particles

Thibault Damour, Lawrence M. Krauss

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

Perturbations due to the planets combined with the non-Coulomb nature of the gravitational potential in the Sun imply that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that are gravitationally captured by scattering in surface layers of the Sun can evolve into orbits that no longer intersect the Sun. For orbits with a semimajor axis < 1/2 of Jupiter's orbit, such WIMPs can persist in the solar system for > 109 years, leading to a previously unanticipated population intersecting Earth's orbit. For WIMPs detectable in the next generation of detectors, this population can provide a complementary signal, in the keV range, to that of galactic halo dark matter.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)5726-5729
Number of pages4
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume81
Issue number26
DOIs
StatePublished - 1998

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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