Implications of the AMS-02 positron fraction in cosmic rays

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 $sim 200$.

Constraint on dark matter annihilation with dark star formation using Fermi extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background data

It has been proposed that during the formation of the first generation stars there might be a dark star phase in which the power of the star comes from dark matter annihilation. The adiabatic contraction process to form the dark star would result in a highly concentrated density profile of the host halo at the same time, which may give enhanced indirect detection signals of dark matter. In this work we investigate the extragalactic $gamma$-ray background from dark matter annihilation with such a dark star formation scenario, and employ the isotropic $gamma$-ray data from Fermi-LAT to constrain the model parameters of dark matter. The results suffer from large uncertainties of both the formation rate of the first generation stars and the subsequent evolution effects of the host halos of the dark stars. We find, in the most optimistic case for $gamma$-ray production via dark matter annihilation, the expected extragalactic $gamma$-ray flux will be enhanced by 1-2 orders of magnitude. In such a case, the annihilation cross section of the supersymmetric dark matter can be constrained to the thermal production level, and the leptonic dark matter model which is proposed to explain the positron/electron excesses can be well excluded. Conversely, if the positron/electron excesses are of a dark matter annihilation origin, then the early Universe environment is such that no dark star can form.

Neutrino emission of Fermi supernova remnants

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 supernova 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.

Gamma rays and neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in galaxy clusters

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 use 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.

Leptonic dark matter annihilation in the evolving universe: constraints and implications

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.

Cosmology from very high energy $gamma$-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 through $e^+e^-$ 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.

Clumpiness enhancement of charged cosmic rays from dark matter annihilation with Sommerfeld effect

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 Sommerfeld 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.

Perspective of Galactic dark matter subhalo detection on Fermi from the EGRET observation

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 discovered 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 $2sim 3$.

Dark matter annihilation and non-thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect: I. galaxy cluster

In this work we calculate the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect due to the $e^+e^-$ from dark matter (DM) annihilation in galaxy clusters. Two candidates of DM particle, (1) the weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) and (2) the light dark matter (LDM) are investigated. For each case, we also consider several DM profiles with and without central cusp. We generally find smaller signals than previously reported. Moreover, the diffusion of electrons and positrons in the galaxy clusters, which was generally thought to be negligible, is considered and found to have significant effect on the central electron/positron distribution for DM profile with large spatial gradient. We find that the SZ effect from WIMP is almost always non-observable, even for the highly cuspy DM profile, and using the next generation SZ interferometer such as ALMA. Although the signal of the LDM is much larger than that of the WIMP, the final SZ effect is still very small due to the smoothing effect of diffusion. Only for the configuration with large central cusp and extremely small diffusion effect, the LDM induced SZ effect might have a bit chance of being detected.

The diffuse GeV-TeV $gamma$-ray emission of the Cygnus region

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.