Dark Solar Wind
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Jae Hyeok Chang; David E. Kaplan; Surjeet Rajendran; Harikrishnan Ramani; Erwin H. Tanin
- Source
- Physical Review Letters
- Subject
- High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
General Physics and Astronomy
FOS: Physical sciences
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
High Energy Physics - Experiment
- Language
- English
We study the solar emission of light dark sector particles that self-interact strongly enough to self-thermalize. The resulting outflow behaves like a fluid which accelerates under its own thermal pressure to highly relativistic bulk velocities in the solar system. Compared to the ordinary noninteracting scenario, the local outflow has at least ∼103 higher number density and correspondingly at least ∼103 lower average energy per particle. We show how this generic phenomenon arises in a dark sector composed of millicharged particles strongly self-interacting via a dark photon. The millicharged plasma wind emerging in this model has novel yet predictive signatures that encourages new experimental directions. This phenomenon demonstrates how a small step away from the simplest models can lead to radically different outcomes and thus motivates a broader search for dark sector particles.