Indirect Dark Matter Signals

TL;DR

This paper reviews various indirect dark matter detection signals, discussing their interpretations, uncertainties, and the impact of galactic convection on charged particle yields, highlighting the complexity of confirming dark matter annihilation signatures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of indirect dark matter signals, analyzing their relative merits, uncertainties, and the influence of galactic convection on detection prospects.

Findings

Different signals imply inconsistent WIMP masses.

Galactic convection significantly affects charged particle yields.

Uncertainties in data hinder definitive dark matter detection.

Abstract

Dark Matter annihilation (DMA) may yield an excess of gamma rays and antimatter particles, like antiprotons and positrons, above the background from cosmic ray interactions. Several signatures, ranging from the positron excess, as observed by HEAT, AMS-01 and PAMELA, the gamma ray excess, as observed by the EGRET spectrometer, the WMAP-haze, and constraints from antiprotons, as observed by CAPRICE, BESS and PAMELA, have been discussed in the literature. Unfortunately, the different signatures all lead to different WIMP masses, indicating that at least some of these interpretations are likely to be incorrect. Here we review them and discuss their relative merits and uncertainties. New x-ray data from ROSAT suggests non-negligible convection in our Galaxy, which leads to an order of magnitude uncertainty in the yield of charged particles from DMA, since even a rather small convection will let drift the charged particles in the halo to outer space.