Discriminating different scenarios to account for the cosmic $e^\pm$ excess by synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation

TL;DR

This paper explores how synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation can differentiate between dark matter, pulsars, and other astrophysical sources as explanations for cosmic electron-positron excesses, highlighting distinct spectral and skymap signatures.

Contribution

It proposes a method to discriminate among different cosmic e± excess scenarios using synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation signatures near the Galactic center.

Findings

Different scenarios predict distinct spectra and skymaps.

Energy bands 10^4–10^9 MHz and >10 GeV are key discriminators.

High-precision future observations could distinguish dark matter from other sources.

Abstract

The excesses of the cosmic positron fraction recently measured by PAMELA and the electron spectra by ATIC, PPB-BETS, Fermi and H.E.S.S. indicate the existence of primary electron and positron sources. The possible explanations include dark matter annihilation, decay, and astrophysical origin, like pulsars. In this work we show that these three scenarios can all explain the experimental results of the cosmic $e^\pm$ excess. However, it may be difficult to discriminate these different scenarios by the local measurements of electrons and positrons. We propose possible discriminations among these scenarios through the synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation of the primary electrons/positrons from the region close to the Galactic center. Taking typical configurations, we find the three scenarios predict quite different spectra and skymaps of the synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation, though there are relatively large uncertainties. The most prominent differences come from the energy band $10^4\sim 10^9$ MHz for synchrotron emission and $\gtrsim 10$ GeV for inverse Compton emission. It might be able to discriminate at least the annihilating dark matter scenario from the other two given the high precision synchrotron and diffuse $\gamma$-ray skymaps in the future.