Charge constraints of macroscopic dark matter

Abstract

Macroscopic dark matter (macros) refers to a broad class of alternative candidates to particle dark matter with still unprobed regions of parameter space. Prior work on macros has considered elastic scattering to be the dominant energy transfer mechanism in deriving constraints on the abundance of macros for some range of masses $M_x$ and (geometric) cross-sections $\sigma_x$ However, macros with a significant amount of electric charge would, through Coulomb interactions, interact strongly enough to have produced observable signals on terrestrial, galactic and cosmological scales. We determine the expected signals and constrain the corresponding regions of parameter space, based on the lack of these signals in observations.