2013/12/31 by N. Fornengo, Luca Maccione, L. Maccione +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Antiproton #Astrophysics #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Galaxy #Light dark matter #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Proton #Scalar field dark matter #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2014/04/003
published as JCAP 1404 (2014) 003 · 27 pages, 14 figures. In v2, the model for the antiproton propagation is extended to account for reacceleration and energy losses. The results for the decaying DM case are slightly changed, due to the correction of a minor bug
openalex publication_date 2014/04/02 · arxiv created 2015/01/30 · arxiv updated 2015/02/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Cosmic-ray antiprotons represent an important channel for dark matter indirect-detection studies. Current measurements of the antiproton flux at the top of the atmosphere and theoretical determinations of the secondary antiproton production in the Galaxy are in good agreement, with no manifest deviation which could point to an exotic contribution in this channel. Therefore, antiprotons can be used as a powerful tool for constraining particle dark matter properties. By using the spectrum of PAMELA data from 50 MV to 180 GV in rigidity, we derive bounds on the dark matter annihilation cross section (or decay rate, for decaying dark matter) for the whole spectrum of dark matter annihilation (decay) channels and under different hypotheses of cosmic-rays transport in the Galaxy and in the heliosphere. For typical models of galactic propagation, the constraints are strong, setting a lower bound on the dark matter mass of a ``thermal" relic at about 40–80 GeV for hadronic annihilation channels. These bounds are enhanced to about 150 GeV on the dark matter mass, when large cosmic-rays confinement volumes in the Galaxy are considered, and are reduced to 3–4 GeV for annihilation to light quarks (no bound for heavy-quark production) when the confinement volume is small. Bounds for dark matter lighter than few tens of GeV are due to the low energy part of the PAMELA spectrum, an energy region where solar modulation is relevant: to this aim, we have implemented a detailed solution of the transport equation in the heliosphere, which allowed us not only to extend bounds to light dark matter, but also to determine the uncertainty on the constraints arising from solar modulation modelling. Finally, we estimate the impact of soon-to-come AMS-02 data on the antiproton constraints.