No Arabic abstract
If dark matter (DM) annihilation accounts for the tantalizing excess of cosmic ray electron/positrons, as reported by the PAMELA, ATIC, HESS and FERMI observatories, then the implied annihilation cross section must be relatively large. This results, in the context of standard cosmological models, in very small relic DM abundances that are incompatible with astrophysical observations. We explore possible resolutions to this apparent conflict in terms of non-standard cosmological scenarios; plausibly allowing for large cross sections, while maintaining relic abundances in accord with current observations.
We analyze new diffuse gamma-ray data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which do not confirm an excess in the EGRET data at galactic mid-latitudes, in combination with measurements of electron and positron fuxes from PAMELA, Fermi and HESS within the context of three possible sources: dark matter (DM) annihilation or decay into charged leptons, and a continuum distribution of pulsars. We allow for variations in the backgrounds, consider several DM halo profiles, and account for systematic uncertainties in data where possible. We find that all three scenarios represent the data well. The pulsar description holds for a wide range of injection energy spectra. We compare with ATIC data and the WMAP haze where appropriate, but do not fit these data since the former are discrepant with Fermi data and the latter are subject to large systematic uncertainties. We show that for cusped halo profiles, Fermi could observe a spectacular gamma-ray signal of DM annihilation from the galactic center while seeing no excess at mid-latitudes.
Dark matter decaying or annihilating into mu+mu- or tau+tau- has been proposed as an explanation for the e+e- anomalies reported by PAMELA and Fermi. Recent analyses show that IceCube, supplemented by DeepCore, will be able to significantly constrain the parameter space of decays to mu+mu-, and rule out decays to tau+tau- and annihilations to mu+mu- in less than five years of running. These analyses rely on measuring track-like events in IceCube+DeepCore from down-going nu_mu. In this paper we show that by instead measuring cascade events, which are induced by all neutrino flavors, IceCube+DeepCore can rule out decays to mu+mu- in only three years of running, and rule out decays to tau+tau- and annihilation to mu+mu- in only one year of running. These constraints are highly robust to the choice of dark matter halo profile and independent of dark matter-nucleon cross-section.
Assuming that the positron excess in PAMELA satellite data is a consequence of annihilations of cold dark matter, we consider from a model-independent perspective if the data show a preference for the spin of dark matter. We then perform a general analysis of annihilations into two-body final states to determine what weighted combination of channels best describes the data.
We discuss how the cosmic ray signals reported by the PAMELA and ATIC/PPB-BETS experiments may be understood in a Standard Model (SM) framework supplemented by type II seesaw and a stable SM singlet scalar boson as dark matter. A particle physics explanation of the boost factor can be provided by including an additional SM singlet scalar field.
We point out a selection rule for enhancement (suppression) of odd (even) partial waves of dark matter coannihilation or annihilation using Sommerfeld effect. Using this, the usually velocity-suppressed p-wave annihilation can dominate the annihilation signals in the present Universe. The selection mechanism is a manifestation of the exchange symmetry of identical incoming particles, and generic for multi-state DM with off-diagonal long-range interactions. As a consequence, the relic and late-time annihilation rates are parametrically different and a distinctive phenomenology, with large but strongly velocity-dependent annihilation rates, is predicted.