2011/09/17 by Rob Morris, Morris, Rob, Neal Weiner +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1109.3747
openalex publication_date 2011/09/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The origin of the e+e- 511 keV line observed by INTEGRAL remains unclear. The rate and morphology of the signal have prompted questions as to whether dark matter could play a role. We explore the case of dark matter upscattering in the framework of eXciting Dark Matter (XDM), where WIMPs χ, interacting through a new dark force, scatter into excited states χ*, which subsequently emit e+e- pairs when they de-excite. We numerically compute the cross sections for two Yukawa-coupled DM particles upscattering into excited states, specifically considering variations motivated by recent N-body simulations with additional baryonic physics. We find that that l>0 components of the partial-wave decomposition are often significant contributions to the total cross section and that for reasonable ranges of parameters dark matter can produce the ~1043 e+/s observed by INTEGRAL.