2002/11/20 by Edward A. Baltz, E. A. Baltz, L. Bergstrom +1 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cold dark matter #Cosmology #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Galactic halo #Galaxy #Halo #Light dark matter #Neutrino #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Scalar field dark matter #WIMP #Warm dark matter #Weakly interacting massive particles #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.67.043516
published as Phys.Rev. D67 (2003) 043516 · 7 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2002/11/20 · openalex publication_date 2003/02/27 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the favored candidates for cold dark matter in the universe. The phenomenology of supersymmetric WIMPs has been quite developed during recent years. However, there are other possibilities which have not been discussed as much. One example is a right-handed massive neutrino, which has recently been proposed in the context of a version of the Zee model for massive neutrinos. This TeV-scale, leptonic WIMP (or LIMP, for short) may at first sight appear to be essentially undetectable. However, we point out that the radiatively induced annihilation rate into leptons and photons is bound to be substantial, and provides a conspicuous gamma-ray signature for annihilations in the galactic halo. This gives a window of opportunity for Air \ifmmode \checkC\else \vC\fierenkov Telescopes with the ability to observe the galactic center, such as the HESS and CANGAROO arrays, and also for the GLAST space telescope. In addition, the contribution to the positron cosmic ray flux is in principle detectable, but this would require very strong local density enhancements in the dark matter halo distribution.