The AMS-02 collaboration has just released its first result of the cosmic positron fraction $e^+/(e^-+e^+)$ with high precision up to $sim 350$ GeV. The AMS-02 result shows the same trend with the previous PAMELA result, which requires extra electron
/positron sources on top of the conventional cosmic ray background, either from astrophysical sources or from dark matter annihilation/decay. In this paper we try to figure out the nature of the extra sources by fitting to the AMS-02 $e^+/(e^-+e^+)$ data, as well as the electron and proton spectra by PAMELA and the $(e^-+e^+)$ spectrum by Fermi and HESS. We adopt the GALPROP package to calculate the propagation of the Galactic cosmic rays and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampler to do the fit. We find that the AMS-02 data have implied essential difference from the PAMELA data. There is {rm tension} between the AMS-02 $e^+/(e^-+e^+)$ data and the Fermi/HESS $(e^-+e^+)$ spectrum, that the AMS-02 data requires less contribution from the extra sources than Fermi/HESS. Then we redo the fit without including the Fermi/HESS data. In this case both the pulsars and dark matter annihilation/decay can explain the AMS-02 data. The pulsar scenario has a soft inject spectrum with the power-law index $sim 2$, while the dark matter scenario needs $tau^+tau^-$ final state with mass $sim 600$ GeV and a boost factor $sim 200$.
The Fermi $gamma$-ray space telescope reported the observation of several Galactic supernova remnants recently, with the $gamma$-ray spectra well described by hadronic $pp$ collisions. The possible neutrino emissions from these Fermi detected superno
va remnants are discussed in this work, assuming the hadronic origin of the $gamma$-ray emission. The muon event rates induced by the neutrinos from these supernova remnants on typical km$^3$ neutrino telescopes, such as the IceCube and the KM3NeT, are calculated. The results show that for most of these supernova remnants the neutrino signals are too weak to be detected by the on-going or up-coming neutrino experiment. Only for the TeV bright sources RX J1713.7-3946 and possibly W28 the neutrino signals can be comparable with the atmospheric background in the TeV region, if the protons can be accelerated to very high energies. The northern hemisphere based neutrino telescope might detect the neutrinos from these two sources.
The $gamma$-ray and neutrino emissions from dark matter (DM) annihilation in galaxy clusters are studied. After about one year operation of Fermi-LAT, several nearby clusters are reported with stringent upper limits of GeV $gamma$-ray emission. We us
e the Fermi-LAT upper limits of these clusters to constrain the DM model parameters. We find that the DM model distributed with substructures predicted in cold DM (CDM) scenario is strongly constrained by Fermi-LAT $gamma$-ray data. Especially for the leptonic annihilation scenario which may account for the $e^{pm}$ excesses discovered by PAMELA/Fermi-LAT/HESS, the constraint on the minimum mass of substructures is of the level $10^2-10^3$ M$_{odot}$, which is much larger than that expected in CDM picture, but is consistent with a warm DM scenario. We further investigate the sensitivity of neutrino detections of the clusters by IceCube. It is found that neutrino detection is much more difficult than $gamma$-rays. Only for very heavy DM ($sim 10$ TeV) together with a considerable branching ratio to line neutrinos the neutrino sensitivity is comparable with that of $gamma$-rays.
In this work we study how the cosmological parameter, the Hubble constant $H_0$, can be constrained by observation of very high energy (VHE) $gamma$-rays at the TeV scale. The VHE $gamma$-rays experience attenuation by background radiation field thro
ugh $e^+e^-$ pair production during the propagation in the intergalactic space. This effect is proportional to the distance that the VHE $gamma$-rays go through. Therefore the absorption of TeV $gamma$-rays can be taken as cosmological distance indicator to constrain the cosmological parameters. Two blazars Mrk 501 and 1ES 1101-232, which have relatively good spectra measurements by the atmospheric Cerenkov telescope, are studied to constrain $H_0$. The mechanism constraining the Hubble constant adopted here is very different from the previous methods such as the observations of type Ia supernovae and the cosmic microwave background. However, at $2sigma$ level, our result is consistent with other methods.
In this work, we revisit the all-sky Galactic diffuse $gamma$-ray emission taking into account the new measurements of cosmic ray electron/positron spectrum by PAMELA, ATIC and Fermi, which show excesses of cosmic electrons/positrons beyond the expec
ted fluxes in the conventional model. Since the origins of the extra electrons/positrons are not clear, we consider three different scenarios to account for the excesses: the astrophysical sources such as the Galactic pulsars, dark matter decay and annihilation. Further, new results from Fermi-LAT of the (extra-)Galactic diffuse $gamma$-ray are adopted. The background cosmic rays without the new sources give lower diffuse $gamma$ rays compared to Fermi-LAT observation, which is consistent with previous analysis. The scenario with astrophysical sources predicts diffuse $gamma$-rays with little difference with the background. The dark matter annihilation models with $tau^{pm}$ final state are disfavored by the Fermi diffuse $gamma$-ray data, while there are only few constraints on the decaying dark matter scenario. Furthermore, these is always a bump at higher energies ($sim$ TeV) of the diffuse $gamma$-ray spectra for the dark matter scenarios due to final state radiation. Finally we find that the Fermi-LAT diffuse $gamma$-ray data can be explained by simply enlarging the normalization of the electron spectrum without introduce any new sources, which may indicate that the current constraints on the dark matter models can be much stronger given a precise background estimate.
The excesses of the cosmic positron fraction recently measured by PAMELA and the electron spectra by ATIC, PPB-BETS, Fermi and H.E.S.S. indicate the existence of primary electron and positron sources. The possible explanations include dark matter ann
ihilation, decay, and astrophysical origin, like pulsars. In this work we show that these three scenarios can all explain the experimental results of the cosmic $e^pm$ excess. However, it may be difficult to discriminate these different scenarios by the local measurements of electrons and positrons. We propose possible discriminations among these scenarios through the synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation of the primary electrons/positrons from the region close to the Galactic center. Taking typical configurations, we find the three scenarios predict quite different spectra and skymaps of the synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation, though there are relatively large uncertainties. The most prominent differences come from the energy band $10^4sim 10^9$ MHz for synchrotron emission and $gtrsim 10$ GeV for inverse Compton emission. It might be able to discriminate at least the annihilating dark matter scenario from the other two given the high precision synchrotron and diffuse $gamma$-ray skymaps in the future.
Boost factors of dark matter annihilation into antiprotons and electrons/positrons due to the clumpiness of dark matter distribution are studied in detail in this work, taking the Sommerfeld effect into account. It has been thought that the Sommerfel
d effect, if exists, will be more remarkable in substructures because they are colder than the host halo, and may result in a larger boost factor. We give a full calculation of the boost factors based on the recent N-body simulations. Three typical cases of Sommerfeld effects, the non-resonant, moderately resonant and strongly resonant cases are considered. We find that for the non-resonant and moderately resonant cases the enhancement effects of substructures due to the Sommerfeld effect are very small ($sim mathcal{O}(1)$) because of the saturation behavior of the Sommerfeld effect. For the strongly resonant case the boost factor is typically smaller than $sim mathcal{O}(10)$. However, it is possible in some very extreme cases that DM distribution is adopted to give the maximal annihilation the boost factor can reach up to $sim 1000$. The variances of the boost factors due to different realizations of substructures distribution are also discussed in the work.
The perspective of the detectability of Galactic dark matter subhaloes on the Fermi satellite is investigated in this work. Under the assumptions that dark matter annihilation accounts for the GeV excess of the Galactic diffuse $gamma$-rays discovere
d by EGRET and the $gamma$-ray flux is dominated by the contribution from subhaloes of dark matter, we calculate the expected number of dark matter subhaloes that Fermi may detect. We show that Fermi may detect a few tens to several hundred subhaloes in 1-year all sky survey. Since EGRET observation is taken as a normalization, this prediction is independent of the particle physics property of dark matter. The uncertainties of the prediction are discussed in detail. We find that the major uncertainty comes from the mass function of subhaloes, i.e., whether the subhaloes are point like (high-mass rich) or diffuse like (low-mass rich). Other uncertainties like the background estimation and the observational errors will contribute a factor of $2sim 3$.
The GZK cutoff predicted at the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) spectrum as been observed by the HiRes and Auger experiments. The results put severe constraints on the effect of Lorentz Invariance Violation(LIV) which has been introduced to expl
ain the absence of GZK cutoff indicated in the AGASA data. Assuming homogeneous source distribution with a single power law spectrum, we calculate the spectrum of UHECRs observed on Earth by taking the processes of photopion production, $e^+e^-$ pair production and adiabatic energy loss into account. The effect of LIV is also taken into account in the calculation. By fitting the HiRes monocular spectra and the Auger combined spectra, we show that the LIV parameter is constrained to $xi=-0.8^{+3.2}_{-0.5}times10^{-23}$ and $0.0^{+1.0}_{-0.4}times10^{-23}$ respectively, which is well consistent with strict Lorentz Invariance up to the highest energy.
Recently the Milagro experiment observed diffuse multi-TeV gamma-ray emission in the Cygnus region, which is significantly stronger than what predicted by the Galactic cosmic ray model. However, the sub-GeV observation by EGRET shows no excess to the
prediction based on the same model. This TeV excess implies possible high energy cosmic rays populated in the region with harder spectrum than that observed on the Earth. In the work we studied this theoretical speculation in detail. We find that, a diffuse proton source with power index $alpha_plesssim 2.3$, or a diffuse electron source with power index $alpha_elesssim2.6$ can reproduce the Milagros observation without conflicting with the EGRET data. Further detections on neutrinos, a diagnostic of the hadronic model, and hard X-ray synchrontron radiation, a diagnostic of the lepton model, help to break this degeneracy. In combination with the gamma ray observations to several hundred GeV by Fermi, we will be able to understand the diffuse emission mechanisms in the Cygnus region better.
