Category Archives: Dark Matter

June 18, 2013

More Dark Matter: First Planck Results

By darkmatterdarkenergy

Image

Credit: European Space Agency and Planck Collaboration –

Map of CMB temperature fluctuations with slightly colder areas in blue, and hotter areas in red.

 

The first results from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite have provided excellent confirmation for the Lambda-CDM (Dark Energy and Cold Dark Matter) model. The results also indicate somewhat more dark matter, and somewhat less dark energy, than previously thought. These are the most sensitive and accurate measurements of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation to date.

Results from Planck’s first 1 year and 3 months of observations were released in March, 2013. The new proportions for mass-energy density in the current universe are:

  • Ordinary matter 5%
  • Dark matter 27%
  • Dark energy 68%

Planck_cosmic_recipe_node_full_image

Credit: European Space Agency and Planck Collaboration

The prior best estimate for dark matter primarily from the NASA WMAP satellite observations, was 23%. So the dark matter fraction is higher, and the dark energy fraction correspondingly lower, than WMAP measurements had indicated.

Dark energy still dominates by a very considerable degree, although somewhat less than had been thought prior to the Planck results. This dark energy – Lambda – drives the universe’s expansion to speed up, which is known as the runaway universe. At one time dark matter dominated, but for the last 5 billion years, dark energy has been dominant, and it grows in importance as the universe continues to expand.

The Planck results also added a little bit to the age of the universe, which is measured to be about 13.8 billion years, about 3 times the age of the earth. The CMB radiation itself, was emitted when the universe was only 380,000 years old. It was originally in the infrared and optical portions of the spectrum, but has been massively red-shifted, by around 1500 times, due to the expansion of the universe.

There are many other science results from the Planck Science team in cosmology and astrophysics. These include initial support indicated for relatively simple models of “slow roll” inflation in the extremely early universe. You can find details at the ESA web sites referenced below, and in the large collection of papers from the 47th ESlab Conference link.

References:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe – news article at ESA site

https://darkmatterdarkenergy.com/2011/07/04/dark-energy-drives-a-runaway-universe/ – runaway universe blog

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=planck – Planck Science Team site

http://www.sciops.esa.int/index.php?project=PLANCK&page=47_eslab – 47th ESlab Conference presentations on Planck science results

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Big Bang & Inflation, Dark Energy, Dark Matter

April 19, 2013

SuperCDMS Collaboration Possible Detection of Dark Matter

By darkmatterdarkenergy

Hard on the heels of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) positron excess and possible dark matter report, we now have a hint of direct dark matter detection from the SuperCDMS Collaboration this month. A recent blog here on darkmatterdarkenergy.com discusses the detection of excess positron flux seen in the AMS-02 experiment on board the Space Shuttle. The two main hypotheses for the source of excess positrons are either a nearby pulsar or dark matter in our Milky Way galaxy and halo.

Image

Photo: CDMS-II silicon detector, Credit: SuperCMDS Collaboration

CDMS-II (CDMS stands for Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) is a direct dark matter detection experiment based in the Soudan mine in Minnesota. The deep underground location shields the experiment from most of the cosmic rays impinging on the Earth’s surface. Previously they had reported a null result based on their germanium detector and ruled out a detection. Now they have more completely analyzed data from their silicon detector, which has higher sensitivity for lower possible dark matter masses, and they have detected 3 events which might be due to dark matter and report as follows.

“Monte Carlo simulations have shown that the probability that a statistical fluctuation of our known backgrounds could produce three or more events anywhere in our signal region is 5.4%. However, they would rarely produce a similar energy distribution. A likelihood analysis that includes the measured recoil energies of the three events gives a 0.19% probability for a model including only known background when tested against a model that also includes a WIMP contribution.”

So essentially they are reporting a possible detection with something ranging from 95% to 99.8% likelihood. This is a hint, but cannot be considered a firm detection as it rises to the level of perhaps 3 standard deviations (3 sigma) of statistical significance. Normally one looks to see a 5 sigma significance for a detection to be well confirmed. If the 3 events are real they suggest a relatively low dark matter particle mass of around 8 or 9 GeV/c² (the proton mass is a little under 1 GeV/c², and the Higgs boson around 126 GeV/c²).

Image

Figure: Error ellipses for CDMS-II and CoGeNT, assuming a dark matter WIMP explanation. Blue ellipses are the 68% (dark blue) and 90% (cyan) confidence levels for the CDMS-II experiment. The purple ellipse is the 90% confidence level for CoGeNT.

The figure shows the plane of dark matter (WIMP, or weakly interacting massive particle) cross-section on the y-axis vs. the WIMP mass on the x-axis. Note this is a log-log plot, so the uncertainties are large. The dark blue region is the 1 sigma error ellipse for the CDMS experiment and the light blue region is the 90% confidence error ellipse. The best fit is marked by an asterisk located at mass of 8.6 GeV/c² and with a cross-section a bit under 2 x 10^-41 cm². But the mass could range from less than 6 to as much as 20 or more GeV/c². And the cross-section uncertainty is over two orders of magnitude.

However, this is quite interesting as the error ellipse for the mass and interaction cross-section from this CDMS-II putative result overlaps well with the (smaller) error ellipse of the CoGeNT results. The CoGeNT experiment is a germanium detector run by a different consortium, but based in the same Soudan Underground Laboratory as the CDMS-II experiment! COGENT sees a possible signal with around 2.8 sigma significance as an annual modulated WIMP wind, with the modulation in the signal due to the Earth’s motion around the Sun and thus relative to the galactic center. The purple colored region in the figure is the CoGeNT 90% confidence error ellipse, and it includes the CDMS-II best fit point and suggests also a mass of roughly 10 GeV/c².

The DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Italy has for years been claiming a highly significant 9 sigma detection of a WIMP (dark matter) wind, but with very large uncertainties in the particle mass and cross-section. However both the COGENT results and this CDMS-II possible result are quite consistent with the centroid of the DAMA/LIBRA error regions.

And both the CoGeNT and DAMA experiments are consistent with an annual modulation peak occurring sometime between late April and the end of May, as is expected based on the Earth’s orbit combined with the Sun’s movement relative to the galactic center.

What we can say at this point is the hottest region to hunt in is around 6 to 10 GeV/c² and with a cross section roughly 10^-41 cm². Physicists may be closing in on the target area for a confirmed weakly interacting dark matter particle detection. We await further results, but the pace of progress seems to be increasing.

References:

https://darkmatterdarkenergy.com/2013/04/07/ams-positron-excess-due-to-dark-matter-or-not/ – Recent first results from AMS for positron excess

http://cdms.berkeley.edu/ – SuperCDMS Collaboration web site

http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4279 – “Dark Matter Search Results Using the Silicon Detectors of CDMS II”

http://cdms.berkeley.edu/APS_CDMS_Si_2013_McCarthy.pdf – Kevin McCarthy’s presentation at the American Physical Society, April 15, 2013

http://cogent.pnnl.gov/ – CoGeNT website

https://darkmatterdarkenergy.com/2011/06/16/do-we-have-a-cogent-direct-detection-of-dark-matter/ – Discussion of CoGeNT 2011 results

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.6243v1.pdf  – DAMA/LIBRA results summary, 2013

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

April 7, 2013

AMS Positron Excess: Due to Dark Matter or not?

By darkmatterdarkenergy

The first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which is an experiment operating in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS), have been released.

ImageIt’s been two years since the delivery via Space Shuttle to the ISS (in May, 2011) of the AMS-02 instrument, which was especially designed to explore the properties of antimatter. And it’s been a long time coming to get to this point, since the experiment was first proposed in 1995 by the Nobel Prize-winning M.I.T. physicist, professor Samuel Ting. A prototype instrument, the AMS-01, flew in a short-duration Space Shuttle mission in 1998, and had much lower sensitivity.

Over 16 countries across the globe participate in the AMS mission, and the instrument underwent testing at the CERN particle physics research center near Geneva and also in the Netherlands before being launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The lifetime of the mission is expected to extend for over 10 years. In this first data release, with over 30 billion cosmic rays detected, the AMS has detected among these over 400,000 positrons, the positively charged antiparticles to electrons. This is the most antimatter that has ever been directly measured in space.

It is hoped that the AMS can shed light on dark matter, since one of the possible signatures of dark matter is the production of positrons and electrons when dark matter particles annihilate. This assumes that some type of WIMP is the explanation for dark matter, WIMP meaning a “weakly interacting massive particle”. Weakly interacting signifies that dark matter particles (in this scenario highly favored by many physicists) would interact through the weak nuclear force, but not the electromagnetic force. Which basically explains why we can’t easily detect them except through their gravitational effects. Massive particle refers to a particle substantially more massive than a proton or neutron, which have rest masses of just under 1 GeV (1 giga volt) in energy terms. A WIMP dark matter particle mass could be 10 to 1000 times or more higher. The lightest member of the neutralino family is the most-favored hypothesized WIMP dark matter candidate.

The figure below shows the positron relative abundance versus energy, based on 18 months of AMS operational data. The energy of detected positrons ranges from 1/2 GeV to over 300 GeV. The abundance, shown on the y-axis, is the fraction of positrons relative to total electrons and positrons detected at a given energy. The spectrum shows a clear trend to relatively fewer positrons as the energy grows to 10 GeV and then a substantially increasing relative number of positrons at higher energies. This general shape for the spectrum was seen with previous experiments including Fermi, Caprice94 and Pamela, but is much clearer with the AMS due to the higher resolution and significantly greater number of positrons detected. It is particularly this increase in positrons seen above 10 GeV that is suggestive of sources other than the general cosmic ray background.

PositronspectrumFigure: Positron relative fraction (y-axis) versus energy (x-axis)

So what is the source of the energetic positrons detected by the AMS? Some or all of these could be produced when two dark matter WIMP particles meet one another. In the WIMP scenario the dark matter particle such as the neutralino is neutrally charged (no electromagnetic interaction, remember) and also its own antiparticle. And when a particle meets its antiparticle what happens is that they mutually annihilate. The energy of the pair of colliding dark matter particles is transformed into lighter particles, including electron-positron pairs and energetic photons including gamma rays.

Another likely source is pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars with magnetic fields. Since neutron stars are compact and rotate quickly, and their magnetic field strengths are high, electrons and positrons can be accelerated to very high energy. In particular, the Geminga pulsar is the closest energetic pulsar and has been suggested as a major source of these extra positrons.

More data is needed, especially at higher energies above 100 GeV. Over the next few years as AMS continues to operate and the number of positrons detected climbs to 1 million and above, this spectral shape will be better determined. And as the shape of the high-energy portion of the spectrum becomes clearer, it will help elucidate whether dark matter or pulsars or something else are the primary source of the positrons.

You can follow AMS-02 on Facebook here.

References:

http://www.ams02.org/2013/04/first-results-from-the-alpha-magnetic-spectrometer-ams-experiment/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/science/space/new-clues-to-the-mystery-of-dark-matter.html

http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/first-result-ams-experiment

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2009/aug/10/excess-positrons-are-linked-to-geminga-pulsar

https://darkmatterdarkenergy.com/2012/06/05/antimatter-is-not-dark-matter-antimatter-being-uncovered-with-nuclear-reactors/

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

January 18, 2013

Caught in the Cosmic Web – Dark Matter Structure Revealed

By darkmatterdarkenergy

NASA/ESA Hubblecast 58

This video reports on a very impressive research effort resulting in the first 3-D mapping of dark matter for a galaxy cluster. A massive galaxy cluster over 5 billion light-years from Earth is the first to have such a full 3-dimensional map of its dark matter distribution. The dark matter is the dominant component of the cluster’s mass. The cluster, known as MACS J0717, is still in the formation stage. The Hubble Space Telescope and a number of ground-based telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii were used to determine the spatial distribution. The longest filament of dark matter discovered by the international team of astronomers stretches across 60 million light-years. Gravitational lensing of galaxy images (as Einstein predicted) and redshift measurements for a large number of galaxies were required in order to uncover the 3-D shape and characteristics of the filament.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in Dark Matter

November 13, 2012

Supersymmetry in Trouble?

By darkmatterdarkenergy

Image

There’s a major particle physics symposium going on this week in Kyoto, Japan – Hadron Collider Physics 2012. A paper from the LHCb collaboration, with 619 authors, was presented on the opening day, here is the title and abstract:

First evidence for the decay Bs -> mu+ mu-

A search for the rare decays Bs->mu+mu- and B0->mu+mu- is performed using data collected in 2011 and 2012 with the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The data samples comprise 1.1 fb^-1 of proton-proton collisions at sqrt{s} = 8 TeV and 1.0 fb^-1 at sqrt{s}=7 TeV. We observe an excess of Bs -> mu+ mu- candidates with respect to the background expectation. The probability that the background could produce such an excess or larger is 5.3 x 10^-4 corresponding to a signal significance of 3.5 standard deviations. A maximum-likelihood fit gives a branching fraction of BR(Bs -> mu+ mu-) = (3.2^{+1.5}_{-1.2}) x 10^-9, where the statistical uncertainty is 95% of the total uncertainty. This result is in agreement with the Standard Model expectation. The observed number of B0 -> mu+ mu- candidates is consistent with the background expectation, giving an upper limit of BR(B0 -> mu+ mu-) < 9.4 x 10^-10 at 95% confidence level.

In other words, the LHCb consortium claim to have observed the quite rare decay channel from B-mesons to muons (each B-meson decaying to two muons), representing about 3 occurrences out of each 1 billion decays of the Bs type of the B-meson. Their detection has marginal statistical significance of 3.5 standard deviations (one would prefer 5 deviations), so needs further confirmation.

What’s a B-meson? It’s a particle that consists of a quark and an anti-quark. Quarks are the underlying constituents of protons and neutrons, but they are composed of 3 quarks each, whereas B-mesons have just two each. The particle is called B-meson because one of the quarks is a bottom quark (there are 6 types of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charge, strange plus the corresponding anti-particles). A Bs-meson consists of a strange quark and an anti-bottom quark (the antiparticle of the bottom quark). Its mass is between 5 and 6 times that of a proton.

What’s a muon? It’s a heavy electron, basically, around 200 times heavier.

What’s important about this proposed result is that the decay ratio (branching fraction) that they have measured is fully consistent with the Standard Model of particle physics, without adding supersymmetry. Supersymmetry relates known particles with integer multiple spin to as-yet-undetected particles with half-integer spin (and known particles of half-integer spin to as-yet-undetected particles with integer spin). So each of the existing Standard Model particles has a “superpartner”.

Yet the very existence of what appears to be a Higgs Boson at around 125 GeV as announced at the LHC in July of this year is highly suggestive of the existence of supersymmetry of some type. Supersymmetry is one way to get the Higgs to have a “reasonable” mass such as what has been found. And there are many other outstanding issues with the Standard Model that supersymmetric theories could help to resolve.

Now this has implications for the interpretation of dark matter as well. One of the favored explanations for dark matter, if it is composed of some fundamental particle, is that it is one type of supersymmetric particle. Since dark matter persists throughout the history of the universe, nearly 14 billion years, it must be highly stable. Now the least massive particle in supersymmetry theories is stable, i.e. does not decay since there is no lighter supersymmetric particle into which it can decay. And this so called LSP for lightest supersymmetric particle is the favored candidate for dark matter.

So if there is no supersymmetry then there needs to be another explanation for dark matter.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

August 14, 2012

Dark Matter on Mars?

By darkmatterdarkenergy

Yes, there is most likely dark matter on Mars, and on Earth as well, and throughout our Solar System. The Curiosity rover will not be searching for dark matter, it not only does not have the right instrumentation, but it also remains on the surface, which is not the way to pursue dark matter searches. On Earth, the direct detection experiments searching for dark matter are made primarily by deploying large crystalline detectors in laboratories within deep mines or inside mountains. A lot of shielding is required. There are too many other sources such as cosmic rays and solar wind particles that would interfere with the search.

marscuriosityaug13
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS  Curiosity Rover

“The expected rate of WIMP interactions is already constrained to be very small (less than one event per kg-year) and the expected nuclear recoil energy is very low (100 keV or less) so background rejection is crucial…  neutrons produce nuclear recoils identical to those from WIMP interactions. To eliminate the fast neutron flux induced by cosmic rays, such experiments must be located deep underground.” – http://astro.fnal.gov/projects/DarkMatter/darkmatter_projects.html

And given the expected interaction rate, one needs detectors with many kilograms of detector volume; a ton or more is desirable. They also need intensive calibration, care and feeding by scientists and technicians.

The dark matter density is expected to be comparable throughout our solar system and in the neighborhood of the Sun. The canonical value that most models use comes from measures of our galaxy’s dynamics and is 0.3 GeV per cubic centimeter (cc). This density is determined by looking at the large-scale gravitational effects of dark matter spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy, including its effect on the rotation rate as a function of distance from the galaxy’s center. It’s important to determine this number to get a handle on the predicted flux of dark matter particles impinging on a detector in one of the labs on Earth.

What does this 0.3 GeV per cc mean in terms of particle density? Well the mass of a proton is about 0.9 GeV where GeV is a billion (giga) electron-Volts and one electron-Volt is the energy of moving a single electron through a one Volt electron potential. This is a convenient unit of measurement for particle physicists. Since GeV is an energy, strictly speaking the mass is in units of GeV/c² (energy divided by the speed of light squared, in accordance with Einstein’s famous equation), “GeV” is used for shorthand. So if the mass of the dark matter particle were equal to the proton, that would imply about 1/3 of a particle per cc. But dark matter particles are heavier than protons according to particle physicists, significantly heavier.

On very large scales, in the early universe, slightly over-dense regions collapsed out of the general Big Bang driven-expansion due to their internal gravity (dominated by the dark matter within) and the ordinary matter in those regions formed galaxies and groups of galaxies, including clusters with up to 1000 or more galaxies. At the cluster of galaxies level the dark matter is dominant, but within an individual galaxy like our Milky Way ordinary matter can dominate due to the high degree of contraction possible with ordinary matter. Dark matter does not clump to the same degree as it can’t “cool off” via radiation.

So while dark matter dominates on the largest scales within the universe, amounting to 5 times as much matter as ordinary matter, within our galaxy the ordinary matter density is larger. Ordinary matter clumps more easily than dark matter, since it interacts with itself and light readily and undergoes cooling via radiative processes. The removal of energy via radiation allows matter to clump into molecular clouds and in turn form into stars and planets from that material.

A recent study by astronomers and astrophysicists associated with research institutes in Switzerland, Germany, the UK and China has used a new method and new data from a large sample of red dwarf stars to measure the dark matter density in the solar neighborhood. In this case what we mean by the neighborhood is up to about 3000 light-years from the Sun, and what is measured is an average number across that large region.

Their method makes fewer assumptions than other methods about the nature of the shape of our galaxy’s halo, i.e. the details of how the density of regular matter falls off as one moves away from the galaxy center. The new result is about 0.9 GeV per cc and comes with a large error bar of +/- 0.5. It does suggest the correct value may be 3 times higher than that previously assumed. Since the proton mass is 0.9 GeV, coincidentally, this would imply the equivalent of around one proton per cc in mass density. The dark matter particle is heavier, so the number of dark matter particles would be lower than one per cc.

Dark matter is thought to be due to a new particle, a WIMP (weakly-interacting massive particle) of some sort such as the lightest supersymmetric particle, which would remain stable against decay over billions of years. No such supersymmetric particle is yet detected, but the LHC (Large Hadron collider outside of Geneva) is working on the supersymmetry problem as well as the Higgs boson. The apparent discovery of the Higgs boson with mass around 125 GeV by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at LHC is consistent with supersymmetry.

While we don’t know the mass for dark matter WIMPs, the range of somewhat less than 10 GeV up to 1000 GeV is generally favored. Using the new value of 0.9 GeV per cc for dark matter density indicates that if the dark matter mass is around 10 GeV then there would be 1/10 of a dark matter particle per cc (or 100 per liter). If the mass of the particle is around 100 GeV then there would be one dark matter particle per 100 cc (which is 10 per liter).

So even with the potential  increase of a factor of 3 in actual density, this is an extremely rare particle and each one has a very low probability of actually interacting with ordinary matter and being detected. Which is why detectors are growing to 1 ton in size and multiple years of very sensitive observations are needed to place limits on the amount of dark matter or, more hopefully, obtain a statistically significant positive detection. A lot of progress is expected in the next couple of years with a new generation of larger detectors coming on line.

Reference:

S. Garbari, C. Liu, J.I. Read, G. Lake 2012, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., submitted; arXiv:1206.0015v2 “A new determination of the local dark matter density from the kinematics of K dwarfs”

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

July 19, 2012

Dark Matter Bridge Discovered

By darkmatterdarkenergy

A team of astronomers claims to have detected an enormous bridge or filament of dark matter, with a mass estimated to be of order 100 trillion solar masses, and connecting two clusters of galaxies. The two clusters, known as Abell 222 and Abell 223, are about 2.8 billion light-years away and separated from one another by 400 million light-years. Each cluster has around 150 galaxies; actually one of the pair is itself a double cluster.

Clusters of galaxies are gravitationally bound collections of hundreds to a thousand or more galaxies. Often a cluster will be found in the vicinity of other clusters to which it is also gravitationally bound. The universe as a whole is gravitationally unbound – the matter, including the dark matter – is insufficient to stop the continued expansion, which is driven to acceleration in fact, by dark energy.

Dark matter bridge

Figure: Subaru telescope optical photo with mass density shown in blue and statistical significance contours superimposed. In the filament area found near the center of the image, the contours indicate four standard deviations of significance in the detection of dark matter. The cluster Abell 222 is in the south, and Abell 223 is the double cluster in the north of the image. The distance between the two clusters is about 14 arc-minutes, or about ½ the apparent size of the Moon.

Dark matter was originally called “missing matter”, and was first posited by Fritz Zwicky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky) in the 1930s because of his studies of the kinematics of galaxies and galaxy clusters. He measured the velocities of galaxies moving around inside a cluster and found they were significantly greater than expected from the amount of ordinary matter seen in the galaxies themselves. This implied there was more matter than seen in galaxies because the velocities of the galaxies would be determined by the total gravitational field in a cluster, and the questions have been where is, and what is, the “missing matter” inferred by the gravitational effects. X-ray emission has been detected from most clusters of galaxies, and this is due to an additional component of matter outside of galaxies, namely hot gas between galaxies. But it is still insufficient to explain the total mass of clusters as revealed by both the galaxy velocities and the temperature of the hot gas itself, since both are a reflection of the gravitational field in the cluster.

Dark matter is ubiquitous, found on all scales and is generally less clumped than ordinary matter, so it is not surprising that significant dark matter would be found between two associated galaxy clusters. In fact the researchers in this study point out that “It is a firm prediction of the concordance Cold Dark Matter cosmological model that galaxy clusters live at the intersection of large-scale structure filaments.”

The technique used to map the dark matter is gravitational lensing, which is a result of general relativity. The gravitational lensing effect is well established; it has been seen in many clusters of galaxies to date. In gravitational lensing, light is deflected away from a straight-line path by matter in its vicinity.

In this case the gravitational field of the dark matter filament and the galaxy clusters deflect light passing nearby. The image of a background galaxy located behind the cluster will be distorted as the light moves through or nearby the foreground cluster. The amount of distortion depends on the mass of the cluster (or dark matter bridge) and how near the line of sight passes to the cluster center.

There is also a well-detected bridge of ordinary matter in the form of hot X-ray emitting gas connecting the two clusters and in the same location as the newly discovered dark matter bridge.  The scientists used observations from the XMM-Newton satellite to map the X-ray emission from the two clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223 and the hot gas bridge connecting them. Because of the strong gravitational fields of galaxy clusters, the gas interior to galaxy clusters (but exterior to individual galaxies within the cluster) is heated to very high temperatures by frictional processes, resulting in thermal X-ray emission from the clusters.

The research team, led by Jörg Dietrich at the University of Michigan, then performed a gravitational lensing analysis, focusing on the location of the bridge as determined from the X-ray observations. The gravitational lensing work is based on optical observations obtained from the Subaru telescope (operated by the Japanese government, but located on the Big Island of Hawaii) to map the total matter density profile around and between the two clusters. This method detects the sum of dark matter and ordinary matter.

They analyzed the detailed orientations and shapes of over forty thousand background galaxies observable behind the two clusters and the bridge. This work allowed them to determine the contours of the dark matter distribution. They state a 98% confidence in the existence of a bridge or filament dominated by dark matter.

The amount of dark matter is shown to be much larger than that of ordinary matter, representing over 90% of the total in the filament region, so the gravitational lensing effects are primarily due to the dark matter. Less than 9% of the mass in the filament is in the form of hot gas (ordinary matter). The estimated total mass in the filament is about 1/3 of the mass of either of the galaxy clusters, each of which is also dominated by dark matter.

Observations of galaxy distributions show that galaxies are found in groups, clusters, and filaments connecting regions of galaxy concentration. Cosmological simulations of the evolution of the universe on supercomputers indicate that the distribution of dark matter should have a filamentary structure as well. So although the result is in many ways not surprising, it represents the first detection of such a structure to date.

 

References:

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20623-dark-matter-scaffolding-of-universe-detected-for-the-first-time – press release from the University of Michigan

http://www.gizmag.com/dark-matter-filaments-found/23281/ “Dark matter filaments detected for the first time”

J. Dietrich et al. 2012 http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.0809 “A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies”

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

July 5, 2012

Why the Higgs Boson is not Dark Matter

By darkmatterdarkenergy

The Higgs boson is considered a necessary part of the Standard Model of particle physics. In the Standard Model there are 3 main forces of nature: the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. The Standard Model does not address gravity and we do not yet have a proven theory for the unification of gravity with the other 3 forces.

On July 4th CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, announced that two experiments using the Large Hadron Collider accelerator, ATLAS and CMS, have both amassed strong statistical evidence (around 5 sigma) for a new particle. This new particle has a mass of about 126 GeV* and “smells” very much like it is the long sought after, and elusive, Higgs boson. The prediction of the Higgs dates from 1964. For comparison, the proton mass is about 0.94 GeV, so the Higgs is around 134 times more massive. Further work is necessary to determine all of its properties, but at this point it looks as if the new particle decays into other particles in the expected manner. It is these decay products that are actually detected.

This decades-long search has proceeded in fits and starts, principally at CERN in Europe and Fermilab in the U.S., with different accelerators and detectors. Over time the experiments were able to exclude possible masses for the Higgs, since the rate of creation of different decay products varies for different putative masses. By the end of 2011 it looked like there was a preliminary signal, not yet of sufficient statistical strength, but that the mass would have to be in the range of about 115 to 130 GeV.

Image

The CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: Mark Thiessen/National Geographic Society/Corbis

One of my professors, Steven Weinberg, won the Nobel Prize in Physics years ago for his work on unifying the electromagnetic force and the weak force. While the Standard Model and the body of work in particle physics provides a theoretical underpinning for all of the particles which we observe, and their quantum properties, and describes a unification of the strong force (which holds together the quarks inside a proton or neutron) with these other two forces, it also requires an additional mechanism to explain why most particles have non-zero masses.

The Higgs mechanism is the favored explanation, and it predicts a particle as the mediator to provide masses to other particles. The Higgs mechanism is theorized as an all-pervasive Higgs field, which slows down particles as they move through it. As you swim through water you feel a drag that slows you down. A fish with a very hydrodynamic design will feel less drag. In the particle world, more massive ones slow down more than the lighter ones, since they interact more strongly with the Higgs field.

The particle corresponding to this mechanism is known as the Higgs boson. Particles can have quantum spin that is a multiple of ½ or an integer multiple. Bosons have integer multiple spins. Actually the spin of the Higgs boson is zero. All of the force mediator particles such as the photon (spin = 1), which mediates electromagnetism, are bosons.

The Large Hadron Collider is in some sense recreating the conditions of the very early universe by smashing particles together at 7000 GeV, or 7 TeV. The Higgs originally would have been created in Nature in the very early part of the Big Bang, around the first one-trillionth of a second. The appearance of the Higgs broke the unification, or symmetry, between the electromagnetic and weak forces that Steven Weinberg demonstrated are one at very high energies. And the Higgs gave mass to particles.

Without the Higgs mechanism, all particles would be massless, and thus travelling at the speed of light, and structure in the universe – stars, planets, galaxies, human beings, would not be possible. Even the existence of the proton itself requires that quarks have mass, although most of the proton mass comes from the energy of the gluons (strong force mediation particle) and ‘virtual’ quark-antiquark pairs found inside it.

The Higgs boson cannot be the explanation for dark matter for a very simple reason. Dark matter must be stable with a very long lifetime, persisting over the universe’s present age of 14 billion years. It mostly sits in space doing nothing except providing additional gravitational interaction with ordinary matter. The favored candidate for dark matter is the least massive supersymmetric particle; being the least massive, it would have nothing to decay into. Supersymmetry is a theoretical extension beyond the Standard Model. No supersymmetric particles are detected as of yet, but the theory has a lot of support and has the benefit of stabilizing the mass of the Higgs itself.

The Higgs boson, on the other hand, decays very rapidly. There are various decay channels, including into quarks, W/Z bosons, leptons or photons, producing these in pairs (two Zs, two top quarks etc.). Sometimes even four particles are produced from a single Higgs decay. It is these decay products that are actually detected in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

There are a few experiments that are claiming to have directly detected dark matter. The favored mass range from the COGENT and DAMA/LIBRA experiments is around 10 GeV for dark matter, much more than a proton, but less than 10% of the Higgs’ mass. Now that the Higgs appears to have been found, work will proceed on confirming and elucidating its properties. And the next great hunt for particle physics may be the direct detection of dark matter particles and the beginning of a determination if supersymmetry is real.

* GeV = Giga-electronVolt or 1 billion electron Volts. 1 TeV (Tera-electronVolt) = 1000 GeV

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/2012/07/higgs-fireworks-on-july-4/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktEpSvzPROc – Don Lincoln of Fermilab on how we search for the Higgs at particle accelerators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4-wVzjnQRI&feature=related – BBC documentary

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Big Bang & Inflation, Dark Matter

June 5, 2012

Antimatter is not Dark Matter: Antimatter secrets uncovered with nuclear reactors

By darkmatterdarkenergy

Dark matter is much more abundant than ordinary matter. On the other hand, antimatter is much rarer in the universe than ordinary matter. Antimatter is not dark matter. In general dark matter refers to something other than antimatter, although it would be possible to have dark matter that is anti-dark matter. See this prior post https://darkmatterdarkenergy.com/2011/06/04/dark-matter-powered-stars/

Antimatter refers to matter that is similar to ordinary matter but has the opposite electrical charge from what is seen in regular matter. Electrons have a negative charge of -1, positrons, which are anti-electrons, have a positive charge of +1. Similarly, protons posses a charge of +1, and antiprotons have a charge of -1. Inside protons and neutrons there are quarks. There can also be antiquarks and so on.

When a particle and its associated anti-particle get too close to one another they mutually annihilate and all of their rest mass energy is converted to radiation or other particles, in accordance with E = mc2. For example, the electron has a rest mass of 511 keV (1 keV is one thousand electron-Volts, where the energy of 1 eV is that of moving an electron through a potential of one Volt.) When an electron and positron (anti-electron) annihilate, two gamma rays are produced each with energy around 511 keV. See the figure below, which is the Feynman diagram for the interaction. In the case of electron-positron annihilation, this is the only outcome possible due to the low energy of the two annihilating particles.

Image

Mutual annhilation of an electron and positron yielding two gamma rays at 511 keV each

The big mystery is why there is matter in the universe at all! Why did not the Big Bang produce equal amounts of matter and anti-matter? In such a case the matter and anti-matter mutual annihilation process could have left little or no matter behind, and stars, galaxies, planets and people could not have formed. Cosmologists and particle physicists believe there was some small excess of matter over anti-matter, such that our present amount of matter remained after all the annihilation processes were finished.

This excess of matter over anti-matter is thought to be due to some asymmetry in the laws of physics. In general the laws are highly symmetric. Particle physicists look to understand the degree and nature of any putative asymmetries. One way to do this is by studying neutrinos, very low mass electrically neutral particles which are signatures of the weak nuclear force and products of radioactive decay. The neutrino mass is less than 2 eV, much, much less than the already small electron mass. There are believed to be 3 types of neutrinos – electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos – which are in turn associated with the electron, muon and tau particles; the muon and tau are ‘heavy’ members of the electron family.

If the neutrino has non-zero mass, then through a quantum effect known as “neutrino oscillation”, the different types of neutrinos mix together. This is due to the wave nature of all particles in quantum mechanics. Neutrinos have been detected from the Sun for many years, but at a much lower rate than initially expected, which was an outstanding puzzle. The “neutrino oscillation” mechanism resolves the discrepancy. Also, differences in neutrino and antineutrino interactions, which are due to neutrino oscillation, are thought by many particle physics to be related to the excess of matter over antimatter in the universe.

There are 3 parameters of the “neutrino oscillation” theory, which are known as ‘mixing angles’, and two of these, θ12 and θ23, have been reasonably well measured. The third mixing angle, known as θ13, is has not been well measurable until very recently.

Particle physicists working as part of the US-Chinese collaboration at the Daya Bay experiment have announced in March 2012 a positive result for the third mixing angle. It is based on measurements made near two nuclear reactors in China, one at Daya Bay and one at Ling Ao. Nuclear reactors are strong sources of antineutrinos. Another similar experiment, known as RENO, is based at a six-reactor nuclear power site in Korea. As of April 2012 the RENO physicists are also claiming a positive measurement of the θ13 mixing angle parameter, with a similar level of statistical confidence in excluding the zero value hypothesis.

Both experiments are indicating a value of around 0.10 for the mixing angle parameter, satisfying the expression sin2 (2θ13 ) = 0.1.

Other experiments include T2K in Japan, MINOS in the US and the Double Chooz international collaboration based in France. All three are seeing hints of a positive value of θ13 as well, but none have reached the statistical confidence level of the Daya Bay and RENO experiments.

The value being measured is surprisingly large, and thus very supportive of the neutrino oscillation theory for the matter vs. anti-matter discrepancy. These are exciting times for oscillating neutrinos and these experiments are moving us to closer to solving the antimatter quandry!

References:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/mar/09/daya-bay-nails-neutrino-oscillation

http://www.nu.to.infn.it/exp/all/reno/ – RENO neutrino experiment, Korea

http://theory.fnal.gov/jetp/talks/RENO-results-seminar-new.pdf – Presentation on RENO results

Wikipedia articles on antimatter, annhilation and the neutrion oscillation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Dark Matter

April 23, 2012

Gamma Ray Line at 130 GeV in FERMI LAT Possible Dark Matter Signal?

By darkmatterdarkenergy

In my last blog entry I noted that the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope collaboration, based on two years of data reduction, was reporting that they had not detected a dark matter signal. They employed a method of looking for gamma rays from nearby dwarf galaxies; these are expected to be good targets due to lack of other gamma ray sources and expected high relative density of dark matter. The team examined gamma ray energies up to 100 GeV and found nothing significant (a proton rest mass energy is just under .94 GeV and 1 GeV is a billion electron volts).

But now just in the past 2 weeks we have an independent author who has examined the publicly available Fermi data for gamma rays emitted from our own Galactic center. He was able to analyze around 3.5 years of data, more than the 2 years’ worth of dwarf galaxy data analyzed. It’s just a little bump in the spectrum (see the central region of the figure below), but he claims to see a positive signal at 130 GeV and with a (marginal) statistical significance just in excess of 3 standard deviations. This is tantalizing, potentially, but not strong enough for a clear detection.

Image

This possible signal is also found at a much higher mass than the neighborhood of 10 GeV where COGENT and DAMA/LIBRA have claimed direct detection in Earth-bound laboratory experiments. The plot thickens and as usual we have to wait for more data from FERMI and other experiments.

http://physicsforme.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/a-tentative-gamma-ray-line-from-dark-matter-annihilation-at-the-fermi-large-area-telescope/

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.2797v1.pdf – Preprint by Christoph Weniger, “A Tentative Gamma-Ray Line from Dark Matter Annihilation at the Fermi Large Area Telescope”

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Dark Matter