Dark Matter Sees The Light

TL;DR

This paper develops a versatile Dark Matter annihilation module to analyze and interpret recent cosmic ray excesses, exploring parameter spaces compatible with multiple experimental results and discussing future experimental tests.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive DM annihilation module that incorporates detailed particle physics effects and analyzes the parameter space explaining recent cosmic ray excesses.

Findings

Identifies parameter regions compatible with PAMELA and ATIC/PPB-BETS excesses.

Highlights tensions between HESS gamma-ray results and other experiments.

Suggests future experiments can distinguish between different DM models.

Abstract

We construct a Dark Matter (DM) annihilation module that can encompass the predictions from a wide array of models built to explain the recently reported PAMELA and ATIC/PPB-BETS excesses. We present a detailed analysis of the injection spectrums for DM annihilation and quantitatively demonstrate effects that have previously not been included from the particle physics perspective. With this module we demonstrate the parameter space that can account for the aforementioned excesses and be compatible with existing high energy gamma ray and neutrino experiments. However, we find that it is relatively generic to have some tension between the results of the HESS experiment and the ATIC/PPB-BETS experiments within the context of annihilating DM. We discuss ways to alleviate this tension and how upcoming experiments will be able to differentiate amongst the various possible explanations of the purported excesses.