Photoproduction of sterile scalars from cold dark matter through the photonic portal

Abstract

Operating with the recently proposed model of hidden sector of the Universe, based on the idea of photonic portal, we consider a new possible astrophysical process of weak photoproduction of sterile scalars from the cold dark matter consisting of sterile Dirac fermions. Subsequently, these scalars weakly decay into secondary couples of photons. Then, primary photons, if energetic enough and interacting in sufficiently dense dark-matter configurations, may form secondary-photon cascades appearing as a new astrophysical phenomenon. Primary photons, probing the cold dark matter, may come e.g. from gamma bursts. We show how the cross-section for the photoproduction and the rate for the decay can be calculated (in the centre-of-mass frame and at rest, respectively, for simplicity).