Closed-form Expressions for Multiscatter Dark Matter Capture Rates

Abstract

Any astrophysical object can, in principle, serve as a probe of the interaction between dark matter (DM) and regular baryonic matter. This method is based on the potential observable consequences annihilations of captured DM have on the surface temperature of the object itself. In a series of previous papers we developed and validated simple analytic approximations for the total capture rates of DM valid in four distinct regions of the DM–nucleon scattering cross section (σ) versus DM particle mass (m X ) parameter space. In this work, we summarize those previous results and extend them significantly by deriving a completely general closed-form solution for the total capture rate of DM in the multiscatter regime. Moreover, we demonstrate the existence of a region in the σ versus m X parameter space where the constraining power of any astrophysical object heated by annihilations of captured DM is lost. This corresponds to a maximal temperature (T crit) any astrophysical object can have, such that it can still serve as a DM probe. Any object with observed temperature T obs > T crit loses its DM constraining power. We provide analytic formulae that can be used to estimate T crit for any object.