Engineering topics

Rehermann, Keith R.

Publications and source records attributed to Rehermann, Keith R..

2 records

DOE OSTI2011

Dark atoms: asymmetry and direct detection

We present a simple UV completion of Atomic Dark Matter (aDM) in which heavy right-handed neutrinos decay to induce both dark and lepton number densities. This model addresses several outstanding cosmological problems: the matter/anti-matter asymmetry, the dark matter abundance, the number of light degrees of freedom in the early universe, and the smoothing of small-scale structure. Additionally, this realization of aDM may reconcile the CoGeNT excess with recently published null results and predicts a signal in the CRESST Oxygen band. We also find that, due to unscreened long-range interactions, the residual unrecombined dark ions settle into a diffuse isothermal halo.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2010

Atomic dark matter

We propose that dark matter is dominantly comprised of atomic bound states. We build a simple model and map the parameter space that results in the early universe formation of hydrogen-like dark atoms. We find that atomic dark matter has interesting implications for cosmology as well as direct detection: Weak-scale dark atoms can accommodate hyperfine splittings of order 100 keV, consistent with the inelastic dark matter interpretation of the DAMA data while naturally evading direct detection bounds. Moreover, protohalo formation can be suppressed below M{sub proto} ∼ 10{sup 3}–10{sup 6}M{sub s}un for weak scale dark matter due to Ion-Radiation and Ion-Atom interactions in the dark sector.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗