Blowing in the dark matter wind

Abstract

Abstract Interactions between dark matter and ordinary matter will transfer momentum, and therefore give rise to a force on ordinary matter due to the dark matter ‘wind.’ We show that this force can be maximal in a realistic model of dark matter, meaning that an order-1 fraction of the dark matter momentum incident on a target of ordinary matter is reflected. The model consists of light (mϕ ≲ eV) scalar dark matter with an effective interaction $$ {\phi}^2\overline{\psi}\psi $$ ϕ 2 ψ ¯ ψ , where ψ is an electron or nucleon field. If the coupling is repulsive and sufficiently strong, the field ϕ is excluded from ordinary matter, analogous to the Meissner effect for photons in a superconductor. We show that there is a large region of parameter space that is compatible with existing constraints, where the force is large enough to be detected by existing force probes, such as satellite tests of the equivalence principle and torsion balance experiments. However, shielding of the dark matter by ordinary matter prevents existing experiments from being sensitive to the dark matter force. We show that precise measurements of spacecraft trajectories proposed to test long distance modifications of gravity are sensitive to this force for a wide range of parameters.