Floating Dark Matter in Celestial Bodies

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for understanding how dark matter can be captured and distributed within celestial bodies, revealing a floating distribution near their surfaces that impacts detection strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model accounting for diffusion, gravity, and capture effects, highlighting the possibility of a floating dark matter population in various celestial objects.

Findings

Dark matter can form a floating distribution near celestial surfaces.

The model predicts significant dark matter populations in bodies like the Sun and Earth.

Implications for new dark matter detection phenomenology.

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) can be captured in celestial bodies after scattering and losing sufficient energy to become gravitationally bound. We derive a general framework that describes the current DM distribution inside celestial objects, which self-consistently includes the effects of concentration diffusion, thermal diffusion, gravity, and capture accumulation. For DM with sufficient interactions, we show that a significant DM population can thermalize and sit towards the celestial-body surface. This floating distribution allows for new phenomenology for DM searches in a wide range of celestial bodies, including the Sun, Earth, Jupiter, Brown Dwarfs, and Exoplanets.