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Observing Dark Matter Decays to Gravitons via Graviton-Photon Conversion

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arxiv 2503.19019 v1 pith:7B33LGD7 submitted 2025-03-24 hep-ph astro-ph.CO

Observing Dark Matter Decays to Gravitons via Graviton-Photon Conversion

classification hep-ph astro-ph.CO
keywords darkgravitonsmatterdecaystextitcosmologicaldecayextragalactic
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Since dark matter is only known to have gravitational interactions, it may plausibly decay to gravitons on cosmological timescales. Although such a scenario can be easily realized, there are currently no known limits on this possibility based on indirect detection searches. We find that the gravitons produced in dark matter decays can convert to photons in large-scale magnetic fields along the line of sight to an observer. These conversions primarily occur within cosmological filaments which occupy a large (order unity) volume fraction and contain $\sim 10-100$ nG fields with $\sim$ Mpc coherence lengths. Thus, dark matter decays to gravitons predict an irreducible population of extragalactic $\textit{photons}$, which we constrain using the extragalactic gamma-ray background measured by the $\textit{Fermi}$-LAT telescope. Using this conservative method, we place the first limits on the dark matter lifetime in the $0.1 {\rm GeV} - 10^8$ GeV mass range, assuming only decays to gravitons. We also make projections for the Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope, which can improve sensitivity to this DM decay channel by an order of magnitude beyond those we set using $\textit{Fermi}$-LAT data.

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Forward citations

Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Constraining memory-burdened primordial black holes with graviton-photon conversion and binary mergers

    hep-ph 2025-11 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Derives gamma-ray upper limits on memory-burdened PBH dark matter abundance using graviton-photon conversion during recombination and merger-induced semiclassical evaporation, excluding mass windows 7.5e5-4.4e7 g and ...

  2. Probing the Cosmic Axion Background via Axion-Photon Conversion in Filaments

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    Axion-photon conversion in cosmic filaments would turn dark-matter decay into a gamma-ray background, and the calculated flux excludes axion masses below ~10^-5 eV for GeV–TeV dark matter with lifetimes below ~10^30 s.

  3. Radio Emission from High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Point Sources

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Radio telescopes outperform other experiments at detecting high-frequency gravitational waves from primordial black hole mergers and boson clouds through conversion to radio signals in magnetic fields.

  4. Sensitivity forecasts for gravitational-wave detectors to dark matter decaying into gravitons

    hep-ph 2025-10 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Model-independent forecasts for the stochastic gravitational-wave background from ultralight dark matter decaying into gravitons and the sensitivity of current and future detectors to this signal.