Orbital Dynamics of the Solar Basin

Abstract

We study the dynamics of the solar basin -- the accumulated population of weakly-interacting particles on bound orbits in the Solar System. We focus on particles starting off on Sun-crossing orbits, corresponding to initial conditions of production inside the Sun, and investigate their evolution over the age of the Solar System. A combination of analytic methods, secular perturbation theory, and direct numerical integration of orbits sheds light on the long- and short-term evolution of a population of test particles orbiting the Sun and perturbed by the planets. Our main results are that the effective lifetime of a solar basin at Earth's location is $\tau_{\rm eff} = 1.20\pm 0.09 \,\mathrm{Gyr}$, and that there is annual (semi-annual) modulation of the basin density with known phase and amplitude at the fractional level of 6.5% (2.2%). These results have important implications for direct detection searches of solar basin particles, and the strong temporal modulation signature yields a robust discovery channel. Our simulations can also be interpreted in the context of gravitational capture of dark matter in the Solar System, with consequences for any dark-matter phenomenon that may occur below the local escape velocity.