Calorimetric Dark Matter Detection with Galactic Center Gas Clouds
Amit Bhoonah (The McDonald Institute and Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 2S8, Canada, ETH Zurich, Ramistrasse 101, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland); Joseph Bramante (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 2Y5, Canada, The McDonald Institute and Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 2S8, Canada); Fatemeh Elahi (School of Particles and Accelerators, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences IPM, Tehran, Iran); Sarah Schon (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 2Y5, Canada, The McDonald Institute and Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 2S8, Canada)
We demonstrate that dark matter heating of gas clouds, hundreds of parsecs from the Milky Way Galactic Center, provides a powerful new test of dark matter interactions. To illustrate, we set a new bound on nucleon scattering for 10–100 MeV mass dark matter. We also constrain millicharged dark matter models, including those proposed to match the recent EDGES 21 cm absorption anomaly. For Galactic Center gas clouds, the Galactic fields’ magnetic deflection of electromagnetically charged dark matter is mitigated, because the magnetic fields around the Galactic Center are poloidal, as opposed to being aligned parallel to the Milky Way disk. We discuss prospects for detecting dark matter using a population of Galactic Center gas clouds warmed by dark matter.