Antideuterons and antihelium nuclei from annihilating dark matter

2020/01/31 by Ilias Cholis, Tim Linden, Dan Hooper · 19 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Antimatter #Antiproton #Astrophysics #Atomic physics #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Deuterium #Electron #Helium #Light dark matter #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Positron #Proton #Scalar field dark matter #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.103019

published in Physical review. D/Physical review. D. 102(10) (American Physical Society) · 9 pages, 7 figures, 3 appendices, in v2 minor changes to reflect journal version

arxiv created 2020/08/26 · openalex publication_date 2020/11/16 · arxiv updated 2020/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Recent studies of the cosmic-ray antiproton-to-proton ratio have identified an excess of \ensuremath∼10--20 GeV antiprotons relative to the predictions of standard astrophysical models. Intriguingly, the properties of this excess are consistent with the same range of dark matter models that can account for the long-standing excess of \ensuremathγ-rays observed from the Galactic Center. Such dark matter candidates can also produce significant fluxes of antideuterium and antihelium nuclei. Here we study the production and transport of such particles, both from astrophysical processes as well as from dark matter annihilation. Importantly, in the case of AMS-02, we find that Alfv'enic reacceleration (i.e., diffusion in momentum space) can boost the expected number of d and ³He events from annihilating dark matter by an order of magnitude or more. For relatively large values of the Alfv'en speed, and for dark matter candidates that are capable of producing the antiproton and \ensuremathγ-ray excesses, we expect annihilations to produce a few antideuteron events and about one antihelium event in 6 yr of AMS-02 data. This is particularly interesting in light of recent reports from the AMS-02 Collaboration describing the detection of a number of antihelium candidate events.

Citations

• Cosmic Antiprotons as a Probe for Supersymmetric Dark Matter?
• Enhanced anti-deuteron Dark Matter signal and the implications of PAMELA
• Galactic antiproton spectrum at high energies: Background expectation versus exotic contributions
• The production of anti-matter in our galaxy
• Deuteron and anti-deuteron production in e+e− collisions at the Z resonance
• HERWIG 6: an event generator for hadron emission reactions with interfering gluons (including supersymmetric processes)
• Antideuterons as a signature of supersymmetric dark matter
• The role of antimatter searches in the hunt for supersymmetric dark matter
• Review of the theoretical and experimental status of dark matter identification with cosmic-ray antideuterons
• usine: Semi-analytical models for Galactic cosmic-ray propagation
• Planck 2018 results: VI. Cosmological parameters

Cited by

• dSphobic Dark Matter