Dark matter substructure can contribute significantly to local dark matter searches and may provide a large uncertainty in the interpretation of those experiments .
For direct detection experiments , sub-halos give rise to an additional dark matter component on top of the smooth dark matter distribution of the host halo .
In the case of dark matter capture in the Sun , sub-halo encounters temporarily increase the number of captured particles .
Even if the encounter happened in the past , the number of dark matter particles captured by the Sun can still be enhanced today compared to expectations from the host halo as those enhancements decay over time .
Using results from an analytical model of the sub-halo population of a Milky Way-like galaxy , valid for sub-halo masses between 10 ^ { -5 } M _ { \odot } and 10 ^ { 11 } M _ { \odot } , we assess the impact of sub-halos on direct dark matter searches in a probabilistic way .
We find that the impact on direct detection can be sizable , with a probability of \sim 10 ^ { -3 } to find an \mathcal { O } ( 1 ) enhancement of the recoil rate .
In the case of the capture rate in the Sun , we find that \mathcal { O } ( 1 ) enhancements are very unlikely , with probability \lesssim 10 ^ { -5 } , and are even impossible for some dark matter masses .