Detecting Composite Dark Matter with Long Range and Contact Interactions in Gas Clouds

TL;DR

This paper explores how observations of cold interstellar gas clouds can be used to detect heavy composite dark matter, setting new constraints on their interactions with ordinary matter.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using gas cloud data to constrain heavy composite dark matter models with long-range and contact interactions.

Findings

Gas clouds provide sensitivity to dark matter up to a thousand solar masses.

Constraints on dark matter interactions with nuclei are derived from gas cloud observations.

Bounds from experiments like CDMS and XENON1T are also analyzed for contact interaction models.

Abstract

Cold interstellar gas clouds provide an exciting new method to discover dark matter. Their immense size makes them uniquely sensitive to interactions from the heaviest, most rarefied dark matter models. Using gas cloud observations, we derive constraints on heavy composite dark matter coupled to the Standard Model through a light dark photon for dark matter up to a thousand solar masses. We find gas clouds are also sensitive to very large composite dark matter that interacts with nuclei through a fixed contact interaction cross section. We also study the contact interaction model and implement multiscatter and overburden analyses to obtain bounds from experiments like CDMS, CRESST, DAMA, XQC, and XENON1T.