Abstract
Cold gas clouds recently discovered hundreds of parsecs from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy have the potential to detect dark matter. With a detailed treatment of gas cloud microphysical interactions, we determine Galactic Center gas cloud temperatures, free electron abundances, atomic ionization fractions, heating rates, cooling rates, and find how these quantities vary with metallicity. Considering a number of different dark sector heating mechanisms, we set new bounds on ultra-light dark photon dark matter for masses $10^{-22}-10^{-10}$ eV, vector portal dark matter coupled through a sub-MeV mass boson, and up to $10^{60}$ GeV mass dark matter that interacts with baryons.
Highlights
Its gravitational influence has been observed in galactic and cosmological dynamics, dark matter’s nongravitational couplings and cosmological origin remain unknown
Considering a number of different dark sector heating mechanisms, we set new bounds on ultralight dark photon dark matter for masses 10−22 − 10−10 eV, vector portal dark matter coupled through a sub–mega electron volt mass boson, and up to 1060 GeV mass dark matter that interacts with baryons
Our results indicate that other dark matter models coupled to the Standard Model through light mediators may be constrained by cold Galactic Center gas clouds; this is left to future work
Summary
Its gravitational influence has been observed in galactic and cosmological dynamics, dark matter’s nongravitational couplings and cosmological origin remain unknown. Cold gas clouds provide a physical environment unobtainable by terrestrial experiments; cold gas clouds contain hundreds of solar masses of ionized gas, which is rather sensitive to heating by dark matter with relatively strong couplings to baryons, or dark matter with a long-range interaction with electrons. One example of the latter is dark matter with a small electromagnetic charge, often called millicharged dark matter. VI, we conclude with some discussion of how the temperature profile of gas clouds might be used to discover dark matter
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