Publication Date:
2020-07-01
Description:
A significant fraction of cosmological dark matter can be formed by very dense macroscopic objects, for example primordial black holes. Gravitational waves offer a promising way to probe these kinds of dark-matter candidates, in a parameter space region that is relatively untested by electromagnetic observations. In this work we consider an ensemble of macroscopic dark matter with masses in the range $$10^{-13}$$10-13–$$1 M_{odot }$$1M⊙ orbiting a super-massive black hole. While the strain produced by an individual dark-matter particle will be very small, gravitational waves emitted by a large number of such objects will add incoherently and produce a stochastic gravitational-wave background. We show that LISA can be a formidable machine for detecting the stochastic background of such objects orbiting the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way, Sgr $$mathrm{A}^{!*}$$A∗, if a dark-matter spike of the type originally predicted by Gondolo and Silk forms near the central black hole.
Print ISSN:
1434-6044
Electronic ISSN:
1434-6052
Topics:
Physics
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