High Mass Dark Matter Searches With the High Speed Flux From the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

As the hunt for dark matter progresses, recently there have been advances in the search for heavy dark matter with a mass well above a TeV. We show the importance of properly modeling the local dark matter velocity distribution, beyond the standard Maxwellian halo model, and in particular how the dynamics of the Large Magellanic Cloud and Milky Way may impact heavy dark matter searches. We introduce some new computational techniques for accurately computing the dark matter flux and the associated detector response. As a specific example, we examine the effect of the Large Magellanic Cloud on heavy dark matter bounds obtained from experiments searching for cosmic rays and magnetic monopoles using plastic etch detectors at the Ohya Mine and aboard the Skylab Space Station.