Nucleus Capture by Macroscopic Dark Matter

Understand

For a class of macroscopic dark matter with a large interaction strength with Standard Model particles, a nucleus could be captured by the dense, heavy dark matter as it traverses ordinary material.

• The radiated photon carries most of the binding energy and is a characteristic signature for dark matter detection.
• We develop analytic formulas and present numerical results for this radiative capture process in the low energy, non-dipole limit.
• Large-volume neutrino detectors like NO$\nu$A, JUNO, DUNE and Super(Hyper)-K may detect multi-hit or single-hit radiative capture events and can search for dark matter up to one gram in mass.