Florian Kuhnel, Glenn D. Starkman, Katherine Freese, Andrew Matas

The detectability of gravitational waves originating from primordial black holes or other large macroscopic dark-matter candidates inspiraling into Sagittarius ${\rm A}^{\!*}$ is investigated. It is shown that LISA should be a formidable machine to detect the stochastic signal from the accumulated collection of such objects that have been gravitationally captured by Sgr$\,{\rm A}^{\!*}$, provided they have masses above $\sim 10^{-20}\,M_{\odot}$. This is especially so, if they are the main component of the dark matter, and the dark-matter density at Sagittarius ${\rm A}^{\!*}$ exceeds its value in the solar-neighborhood. Notably, the window of mass that is unconstrained by various gravitational lensing arguments and observations, $2 \times 10^{20}\,{\rm g} \leq m_{\rm DM} \leq 4 \times 10^{24}\,{\rm g}$, will be accessible. Forecasts are derived for the event rates and signal strengths as a function of dark-matter mass, assuming that the dark-matter candidates are not tidally disrupted during the inspiral. This is certainly the case for primordial black holes, and it shown that it is also very likely the case for candidate objects of nuclear density.

Ariel Zhitnitsky

We advocate the idea that the surprising emission of extreme ultra violet (EUV) radiation and soft x-rays from the Sun are powered externally by incident dark matter (DM) particles. The energy and the spectral shape of this otherwise unexpected solar irradiation is estimated within the quark nugget dark matter model. This model was originally invented as a natural explanation of the observed ratio $\Omega_{\rm dark} \sim \Omega_{\rm visible}$ when the DM and visible matter densities assume the same order of magnitude values. This generic consequence of the model is a result of the common origin of both types of matter which are formed during the same QCD transition and both proportional to the same fundamental dimensional parameter $\Lambda_{\rm QCD}$. We also present arguments suggesting that the transient brightening-like "nano-flares" in the Sun may be related to the annihilation events which inevitably occur in the solar atmosphere within this dark matter scenario.