Dark Cosmic Rays

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential detection of dark matter particles with electric charge, called dark cosmic rays, in existing astrophysical detectors, providing new limits and analysis methods to probe uncharted parameter space.

Contribution

It introduces new analysis strategies for detecting millicharged dark matter in neutrino detectors, expanding the search for dark matter beyond traditional methods.

Findings

New limits on millicharged dark matter parameters

Proposed analyses for Super-Kamiokande and IceCube

Broad applicability to various dark matter models

Abstract

If dark matter particles have an electric charge, as in models of millicharged dark matter, such particles should be accelerated in the same astrophysical accelerators that produce ordinary cosmic rays, and their spectra should have a predictable rigidity dependence. Depending on the charge, the resulting "dark cosmic rays" can be detected as muon-like or neutrino-like events in Super-Kamiokande, IceCube, and other detectors. We present new limits and propose several new analyses, in particular, for the Super-Kamiokande experiment, which can probe a previously unexplored portion of the millicharged dark matter parameter space. Most of our results are fairly general and apply to a broad class of dark matter models.