Feasibility of a collider-based detector search for upward-going fermions produced from gravitationally-bound dark matter within the Earth
Abstract
Dark matter is theorized to be gravitationally captured within the Earth and to subsequently annihilate into dark photons. The dark photons kinetically mix with the Standard Model photons which would allow the decay of the dark photon to pairs of observable fermions near Earth's surface. We examine the feasibility and sensitivity of an LHC-class general-purpose detector to observe muons originating from these dark matter models. We calculate the expected signal rates at a hypothetical general-purpose detector and examine the effect of significant backgrounds on sensitivity. We also consider experimental efficiencies of such a detector to determine expected limits for the proposed analysis. We find these expected limits constitute a significant improvement over existing ones, strongly motivating a search for upward-going muons stemming from dark matter bound within the Earth.
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BibTeX
@misc{vami2026feasibility,
title = {{Feasibility of a collider-based detector search for upward-going fermions produced from gravitationally-bound dark matter within the Earth}},
author = {Tamas Almos Vami and Sanjit Masanam and Matt Bellis and Josephine Swann and Philip Tanedo and Adam Green},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.09194},
eprint = {2609.09194},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09194},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Feasibility of a collider-based detector search for upward-going fermions produced from gravitationally-bound dark matter within the Earth
AU - Tamas Almos Vami
AU - Sanjit Masanam
AU - Matt Bellis
AU - Josephine Swann
AU - Philip Tanedo
AU - Adam Green
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.09194
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09194
AB - Dark matter is theorized to be gravitationally captured within the Earth and to subsequently annihilate into dark photons. The dark photons kinetically mix with the Standard Model photons which would allow the decay of the dark photon to pairs of observable fermions near Earth's surface. We examine the feasibility and sensitivity of an LHC-class general-purpose detector to observe muons originating from these dark matter models. We calculate the expected signal rates at a hypothetical general-purpose detector and examine the effect of significant backgrounds on sensitivity. We also consider experimental efficiencies of such a detector to determine expected limits for the proposed analysis. We find these expected limits constitute a significant improvement over existing ones, strongly motivating a search for upward-going muons stemming from dark matter bound within the Earth.
ER -