182 research outputs found
Solitosynthesis: Cosmological evolution of non-topological solitons
The thermal creation, fusion, evaporation, and destruction of non-topological solitons (NTS) after a phase transition in the early universe is considered. By defining and following NTS statistical equilibrium and departures from it, and depending on particle physics parameters, one of three possible scenarios occurs. If reaction rates are high enough, a period of equilibrium occurs and relic abundances are determined by the freeze-out temperature. Equilibrium first drives most NTS's into their constituents (free phi particles) and then causes rapid fusion into large NTS's. If freeze-out occurs during the first phase, the NTS's are almost entirely destroyed, while if it occurs during the second phase, solitosynthesis occurs and NTS's may be cosmically relevant. For slow reaction rates the NTS's are born frozen out and have the abundance determined by the phase transition. Analytic approximations for determining the abundances are developed, and tested by numerically integrating a reaction network in an expanding universe. Unfortunately, for most of the parameter space considered, solito-destruction/evaporation occurs
Rate for annihilation of galactic dark matter into two photons
A calculation of the cross section for neutralino-neutralino annihilation into two photons is performed and applied to dark matter in the galactic halo to find the counting rate in a large gamma ray detector such as EGRET (Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope) or ASTROGAM. Combining constraints from particle accelerators with the requirement that the neutralinos make up the dark matter, it is found that rates of over a few dozen events per year are unlikely. The assumptions that go into these conclusions are listed. Other particle dark matter candidates which could give larger and perhaps observable signals are suggested
The Nature of the Dark Matter
We review some recent determinations of the amount of dark matter on galactic
and larger scales, with special attention to the dark matter in the Milky Way.
We then briefly review the motivation for and basic physics of several dark
matter candidates, and then go into more depth for two candidates, the
neutralino from supersymmetry, and the baryonic Macho candidate. We give some
motivation for supersymmetry and review neutralino detection strategies. For
Machos we give a description of the discovery of Machos via gravitational
microlensing and the interpretation of the results with respect to the dark
matter problem.Comment: 32 pages, uuencoded, compressed, tarred plain tex file, with 9
postscript figures included. Lectures presented at the International School
of Physics ``Enrico Fermi" Course ``Dark Matter in the Universe", Varenna, 25
July - 4 August, 1995. To appear in the proceeding
Experimental Limits on Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter from the First Two Years of Kepler Data
We present the analysis on our new limits of the dark matter (DM) halo
consisting of primordial black holes (PBHs) or massive compact halo objects
(MACHOs). We present a search of the first two years of publicly available
Kepler mission data for potential signatures of gravitational microlensing
caused by these objects, as well as an extensive analysis of the astrophysical
sources of background error. These include variable stars, flare events, and
comets or asteroids which are moving through the Kepler field. We discuss the
potential of detecting comets using the Kepler lightcurves, presenting
measurements of two known comets and one unidentified object, most likely an
asteroid or comet. After removing the background events with statistical cuts,
we find no microlensing candidates. We therefore present our Monte Carlo
efficiency calculation in order to constrain the PBH DM with masses in the
range of 2 x 10^-9 solar masses to 10^-7 solar masses. We find that PBHs in
this mass range cannot make up the entirety of the DM, thus closing a full
order of magnitude in the allowed mass range for PBH DM.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Cross Sections, relic abundance, and detection rates for neutralino dark matter
Neutralino annihilation and elastic scattering cross sections are derived which differ in important ways from previous work. These are applied to relic abundance calculations and to direct detection of neutralino dark matter from the galactic halo. Assuming the neutralino to be the lightest supersymmetric particle and that it is less massive than the Z sup 0, we find relic densities of neutralinos greater than 4 percent of critical density for almost all values of the supersymmetric parameters. We constrain the parameter space by using results from PETRA (chargino mass less than 23 GeV) and ASP, and then assuming a critical density of neutralinos, display event rates in a cryogenic detector for a variety of models. A new term implies spin independent elastic scattering even for those majorana particles and inclusion of propagator momenta increases detection rates by 10 to 300 percent for pure photinos. Z sup 0-squark interference leads to very low detection rates for some values of the parameters. The new term in the elastic cross section dominates for heavy, mostly spinless materials and mitigates the negative interference cancellations in light materials; except for the pure photino or pure higgsinos cases where it does not contribute. In general, the rates can be substantially different from the pure photino and pure higgsino special cases usually considered
Statistical fluctuations as the origin of nontopological solitons
Nontopological solitons can be formed during a phase transition in the early universe as long as some net charge can be trapped in regions of false vacuum. It has been previously suggested that a particle-antiparticle asymmetry would provide a source for such trapped charge. It is pointed out that, for the model and parameters considered, statistical fluctuations provide a much larger concentration of charge, and are therefore, the dominant source of charge fluctuations in solitogenesis
Fitting Photometry of Blended Microlensing Events
We reexamine the usefulness of fitting blended lightcurve models to
microlensing photometric data. We find agreement with previous workers (e.g.
Wozniak & Paczynski) that this is a difficult proposition because of the
degeneracy of blend fraction with other fit parameters. We show that follow-up
observations at specific point along the lightcurve (peak region and wings) of
high magnification events are the most helpful in removing degeneracies. We
also show that very small errors in the baseline magnitude can result in
problems in measuring the blend fraction, and study the importance of
non-Gaussian errors in the fit results. The biases and skewness in the
distribution of the recovered blend fraction is discussed. We also find a new
approximation formula relating the blend fraction and the unblended fit
parameters to the underlying event duration needed to estimate microlensing
optical depth.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Ap
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