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Register a new userLeptonic dark matter annihilation in the evolving universe: constraints and implications
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The cosmic electron and positron excesses have been explained as possible dark matter (DM) annihilation products. In this work we investigate the possible effects of such a DM annihilation scenario during the evolution history of the Universe. We first calculate the extragalactic $gamma$-ray background (EGRB), which is produced through the final state radiation of DM annihilation to charged leptons and the inverse Compton scattering between electrons/positrons and the cosmic microwave background. The DM halo profile and the minimal halo mass, which are not yet well determined from the current N-body simulations, are constrained by the EGRB data from EGRET and Fermi telescopes. Then we discuss the impact of such leptonic DM models on cosmic evolution, such as the reionization and heating of intergalactic medium, neutral Hydrogen 21 cm signal and suppression of structure formation. We show that the impact on the Hydrogen 21 cm signal might show interesting signatures of DM annihilation, but the influence on star formation is not remarkable. Future observations of the 21 cm signals could be used to place new constraints on the properties of DM.
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The first published Fermi large area telescope (Fermi-LAT) measurement of the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray emission is in good agreement with a single power law, and is not showing any signature of a dominant contribution from dark matter sources in the energy range from 20 to 100 GeV. We use the absolute size and spectral shape of this measured flux to derive cross section limits on three types of generic dark matter candidates: annihilating into quarks, charged leptons and monochromatic photons. Predicted gamma-ray fluxes from annihilating dark matter are strongly affected by the underlying distribution of dark matter, and by using different available results of matter structure formation we assess these uncertainties. We also quantify how the dark matter constraints depend on the assumed conventional backgrounds and on the Universes transparency to high-energy gamma-rays. In reasonable background and dark matter structure scenarios (but not in all scenarios we consider) it is possible to exclude models proposed to explain the excess of electrons and positrons measured by the Fermi-LAT and PAMELA experiments. Derived limits also start to probe cross sections expected from thermally produced relics (e.g. in minimal supersymmetry models) annihilating predominantly into quarks. For the monochromatic gamma-ray signature, the current measurement constrains only dark matter scenarios with very strong signals.
The evolution of the Universe between inflation and the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis is difficult to probe and largely unconstrained. This ignorance profoundly limits our understanding of dark matter: we cannot calculate its thermal relic abundance without knowing when the Universe became radiation dominated. Fortunately, small-scale density perturbations provide a probe of the early Universe that could break this degeneracy. If dark matter is a thermal relic, density perturbations that enter the horizon during an early matter-dominated era grow linearly with the scale factor prior to reheating. The resulting abundance of substructure boosts the annihilation rate by several orders of magnitude, which can compensate for the smaller annihilation cross sections that are required to generate the observed dark matter density in these scenarios. In particular, thermal relics with masses less than a TeV that thermally and kinetically decouple prior to reheating may already be ruled out by Fermi-LAT observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Although these constraints are subject to uncertainties regarding the internal structure of the microhalos that form from the enhanced perturbations, they open up the possibility of using gamma-ray observations to learn about the reheating of the Universe.
We investigate constraints on scalar dark matter (DM) by analyzing the Lyman-alpha forest, which probes structure formation at medium and small scales, and also by studying its cosmological consequences at high and low redshift. For scalar DM that constitutes more than 30% of the total DM density, we obtain a lower limit m >~ 10^{-21} eV for the mass of scalar DM. This implies an upper limit on the initial field displacement (or the decay constant for an axion-like field) of phi <~ 10^{16} GeV. We also derive limits on the energy scale of cosmic inflation and establish an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r < 10^{-3} in the presence of scalar DM. Furthermore, we show that there is very little room for ultralight scalar DM to solve the small-scale crisis of cold DM without spoiling the Lyman-alpha forest results. The constraints presented in this paper can be used for testing generic theories that contain light scalar fields.
We investigate the production of electrons and positrons in the Milky Way within the context of dark matter annihilation. Upper limits on the relevant cross-section are obtained by combining observational data at different wavelengths (from Haslam, WMAP, and Fermi all-sky intensity maps) with recent measurements of the electron and positron spectra in the solar neighbourhood by PAMELA, Fermi, and HESS. We consider synchrotron emission in the radio and microwave bands, as well as inverse Compton scattering and final-state radiation at gamma-ray energies. According to our results, the dark matter annihilation cross-section into electron-positron pairs should not be higher than the canonical value for a thermal relic if the mass of the dark matter candidate is smaller than a few GeV. In addition, we also derive a stringent upper limit on the inner logarithmic slope, alpha, of the density profile of the Milky Way dark matter halo (alpha < 1 if m_dm < 5 GeV, alpha < 1.3 if m_dm < 100 GeV and alpha < 1.5 if m_dm < 2 TeV) assuming that cross-section = 3 x 10^(-26) cm^3 s(-1). A logarithmic slope steeper than alpha about 1.5 is hardly compatible with a thermal relic lighter than about 1 TeV, regardless of the dominant annihilation channel.
The interaction properties of cold dark matter (CDM) particle candidates, such as those of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), generically lead to the structuring of dark matter on scales much smaller than typical galaxies, potentially down to $sim 10^{-10}M_odot$. This clustering translates into a very large population of subhalos in galaxies and affects the predictions for direct and indirect dark matter searches (gamma rays and antimatter cosmic rays). In this paper, we elaborate on previous analytic works to model the Galactic subhalo population, while consistently with current observational dynamical constraints on the Milky Way. In particular, we propose a self-consistent method to account for tidal effects induced by both dark matter and baryons. Our model does not strongly rely on cosmological simulations as they can hardly be fully matched to the real Milky Way, but for setting the initial subhalo mass fraction. Still, it allows to recover the main qualitative features of simulated systems. It can further be easily adapted to any change in the dynamical constraints, and be used to make predictions or derive constraints on dark matter candidates from indirect or direct searches. We compute the annihilation boost factor, including the subhalo-halo cross-product. We confirm that tidal effects induced by the baryonic components of the Galaxy play a very important role, resulting in a local average subhalo mass density $lesssim 1%$ of the total local dark matter mass density, while selecting in the most concentrated objects and leading to interesting features in the overall annihilation profile in the case of a sharp subhalo mass function. Values of global annihilation boost factors range from $sim 2$ to $sim 20$, while the local annihilation rate is about half as much boosted.
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