A Model-Independent Radio Telescope Dark Matter Search in the L and S Bands

Understand

Ultralight bosonic dark matter in its most general form can be detected through its decay or annihilation to a quasimonochromatic radio line.

• Assuming only that this line is consistent with the most general properties of the expected phase space of our Milky Way halo, we have developed and carried out a novel model-independent search for dark matter in the L and S bands.
• More specifically, the search selects for a line that exhibits a Doppler shift with position according to the solar motion through a static halo and similarly varies in intensity with position with respect to the galactic center.
• Over the combined L- and S-band range 1020 - 2700 MHz, radiative annihilation of dark matter is excluded above $\langle\sigma v\rangle \approx 10^{-30} \text{ cm}^3 \text{ s}^{-1}$, and for decay above $\lambda \approx 10^{-32} \text{ s}^{-1}$.