Dark-matter relay for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
Abstract
Astrophysical sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) remain unidentified, and no nearby cosmic accelerators are established even for the highest-energy events. In addition, puzzling correlations of a fraction of UHECR flux with distant blazars were found by HiRes and, recently, Telescope Array experiments. Here we propose that dark matter can provide a mechanism to effectively transfer UHECRs from distant sources: dark-matter particles are boosted by UHECRs near the source and pass their momentum to baryons close to the observer. The probability of this relay is not negligible because of the growth of dark-matter-baryon cross section with energy. We demonstrate that the effect is observable for fermionic dark matter of mass mDM ∼ 25 MeV and discuss possible observational signatures of this mechanism.
Related
- Distinguishing the origin of cosmic birefringence: dark energy, dark matter, and neutrino asymmetry
- Probing the dynamics of extreme galaxies. I. Dark matter content in ultra-diffuse galaxies
- Possible Sources of Iron Nuclei in Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays
- Cosmic Colliders in Binary Blazars Probing Ultra-High-Energy Particle Physics
- Suppression of boosted relic neutrinos by photon backgrounds during ultra-high-energy cosmic ray propagation
BibTeX
@misc{sekretov2026darkmatter,
title = {{Dark-matter relay for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays}},
author = {Mikhail Sekretov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.26611},
eprint = {2609.26611},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26611},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Dark-matter relay for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
AU - Mikhail Sekretov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.26611
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26611
AB - Astrophysical sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) remain unidentified, and no nearby cosmic accelerators are established even for the highest-energy events. In addition, puzzling correlations of a fraction of UHECR flux with distant blazars were found by HiRes and, recently, Telescope Array experiments. Here we propose that dark matter can provide a mechanism to effectively transfer UHECRs from distant sources: dark-matter particles are boosted by UHECRs near the source and pass their momentum to baryons close to the observer. The probability of this relay is not negligible because of the growth of dark-matter-baryon cross section with energy. We demonstrate that the effect is observable for fermionic dark matter of mass m_DM ∼ 25 MeV and discuss possible observational signatures of this mechanism.
ER -