Effect of low mass dark matter particles on the Sun

Marco Taoso, Fabio Iocco, Georges Meynet, Gianfranco Bertone, and Patrick Eggenberger
Phys. Rev. D 82, 083509 – Published 8 October 2010

Abstract

We study the effect of dark matter (DM) particles in the Sun, focusing, in particular, on the possible reduction of the solar neutrinos flux due to the energy carried away by DM particles from the innermost regions of the Sun, and to the consequent reduction of the temperature of the solar core. We find that in the very low-mass range between 4 and 10 GeV, recently advocated to explain the findings of the DAMA and CoGent experiments, the effects on neutrino fluxes are detectable only for DM models with a very small, or vanishing, self-annihilation cross section, such as the so-called asymmetric DM models, and we study the combination of DM masses and spin-dependent cross sections which can be excluded with current solar neutrino data. Finally, we revisit the recent claim that DM models with large self-interacting cross sections can lead to a modification of the position of the convective zone, alleviating or solving the solar composition problem. We show that when the “geometric” upper limit on the capture rate is correctly taken into account, the effects of DM are reduced by orders of magnitude, and the position of the convective zone remains unchanged.

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  • Received 9 June 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.82.083509

© 2010 The American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Marco Taoso1, Fabio Iocco2, Georges Meynet3, Gianfranco Bertone2,4, and Patrick Eggenberger3

  • 1IFIC (CSIC-Universitat de Valencia), Ed. Instituts, Apt. 22085, 46071 Valencia, Spain
  • 2Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095-CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 98 bis Boulevard Arago 75014, Paris, France
  • 3Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Maillettes 51, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
  • 4Institute für Theoretische Physik, Universität Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland

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Issue

Vol. 82, Iss. 8 — 15 October 2010

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