8 research outputs found
Does Solar Physics Provide Constraints to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles?
We investigate whether present data on helioseismology and solar neutrino
fluxes may constrain WIMP--matter interactions in the range of WIMP parameters
under current exploration in WIMP searches. We find that, for a WIMP mass of 30
GeV, once the effect of the presence of WIMPs in the Sun's interior is
maximized, the squared isothermal sound speed is modified, with respect to the
standard solar model, by at most 0.4% at the Sun's center. The maximal effect
on the Boron-8 solar neutrino flux is a reduction of 4.5%. Larger masses lead
to smaller effects. These results imply that present sensitivities in the
measurements of solar properties, though greatly improved in recent years, do
not provide information or constraints on WIMP properties of relevance for dark
matter. Furthermore, we show that, when current bounds from direct WIMP
searches are taken into account, the effect induced by WIMPs with dominant
coherent interactions are drastically reduced as compared to the values quoted
above. The case of neutralinos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is
also discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 2 tables and 9 figures, typeset with ReVTeX4. The paper may
also be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers/helio.ps.gz or
through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart/index.htm
A complete 3D numerical study of the effects of pseudoscalar-photon mixing on quasar polarizations
We present the results of three-dimensional simulations of quasar
polarizations in the presence of pseudoscalar-photon mixing in the
intergalactic medium. The intergalactic magnetic field is assumed to be
uncorrelated in wave vector space but correlated in real space. Such a field
may be obtained if its origin is primordial. Furthermore we assume that the
quasars, located at cosmological distances, have negligible initial
polarization. In the presence of pseudoscalar-photon mixing we show, through a
direct comparison with observations, that this may explain the observed large
scale alignments in quasar polarizations within the framework of big bang
cosmology. We find that the simulation results give a reasonably good fit to
the observed data.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, significant changes, to appear in EPJ