Search Publications

Refinement of the standard halo model for dark matter searches in light of the Gaia Sausage

Evans, N. Wyn; McCabe, Christopher; O'Hare, Ciaran A. J.

Predicting signals in experiments to directly detect dark matter (DM) requires a form for the local DM velocity distribution. Hitherto, the standard halo model (SHM), in which velocities are isotropic and follow a truncated Gaussian law, has performed this job. New data, however, suggest that a substantial fraction of our stellar halo lies in a st…

Observationally inferred dark matter phase-space distribution and direct detection experiments

Mandal, Sayan; Majumdar, Subhabrata; Rentala, Vikram +1 more

We present a detailed analysis of the effect of an observationally determined dark matter (DM) velocity distribution function (VDF) of the Milky Way (MW) on DM direct detection rates. We go beyond local kinematic tracers and use rotation curve data up to 200 kpc to construct a MW mass model and self-consistently determine the local phase-space dis…

Detecting the orbital motion of nearby supermassive black hole binaries with Gaia

Loeb, Abraham; D'Orazio, Daniel J.

We show that a 10-yr Gaia mission could astrometrically detect the orbital motion of ∼1 subparsec separation supermassive black hole binary in the heart of nearby, bright active galactic nuclei (AGN). Candidate AGN lie out to a redshift of z =0.02 and in the V-band magnitude range 10 ≲m_V≲13 . The distribution of detectable binary masses…

Direct detection anomalies in light of G A I A data

Buckley, Matthew R.; Mohlabeng, Gopolang; Murphy, Christopher W.

Measurements from the GAIA satellite have greatly increased our knowledge of the dark matter velocity distributions in the Solar neighborhood. There is evidence for multiple cold structures nearby, including a high-velocity stream counterrotating relative to the Sun. This stream could significantly alter the spectrum of recoil energies and increas…