Updated cosmic-ray and radio constraints on light dark matter: Implications for the GeV gamma-ray excess at the Galactic Center

2014/06/30 by Torsten Bringmann, M. Vollmann, Martin Vollmann +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Antiproton #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Electron #Galactic Center #Galaxy #Hot dark matter #Lepton #Light dark matter #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Proton #Scalar field dark matter #Warm dark matter #Weakly interacting massive particles #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.90.123001

published as Phys. Rev. D. 90, 123001 (2014) · 23 pages revtex, 19 figures, 1 table. Extended discussion of antiproton limits and added references. Matches published version

openalex publication_date 2014/12/01 · arxiv created 2014/12/02 · arxiv updated 2014/12/03 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The apparent gamma-ray excess in the Galactic center region and inner Galaxy has attracted considerable interest, notably because both its spectrum and its radial distribution are consistent with an interpretation in terms of annihilating dark matter particles with a mass of about 10--40 GeV. We confront such an interpretation with an updated compilation of various indirect dark matter detection bounds, which we adapt to the specific form required by the observed signal. We find that cosmic-ray positron data strongly rule out dark matter annihilating to light leptons, or ``democratically'' to all leptons, as an explanation of the signal. Cosmic-ray antiprotons, for which we present independent and significantly improved limits with respect to previous estimates, are already in considerable tension with dark matter (DM) annihilation to any combination of quark final states; the first set of AMS-02 data will thus be able to rule out or confirm the DM hypothesis with high confidence. For reasonable assumptions about the magnetic field in the Galactic center region, radio observations independently put very severe constraints on a DM interpretation of the excess, in particular for all leptonic annihilation channels.

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