Anti-deuterons from heavy Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential detection of anti-deuterons produced by heavy Dark Matter annihilations in the galaxy, highlighting the conditions under which these signals could be observed by future experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of anti-deuteron fluxes from multi-TeV Dark Matter annihilations, emphasizing the impact of annihilation channels on detectability.

Findings

Anti-deuteron fluxes are detectable for quark-dominant annihilation channels.

Fluxes extend into the multi-GeV range above background levels.

Fluxes are suppressed for gauge boson annihilation channels.

Abstract

We study the fluxes of anti-deuterons that could be produced by annihilations in the galactic halo of Dark Matter particles with multi-TeV mass and a large annihilation cross section, as indicated by the recent PAMELA results. The model of Minimal Dark Matter (MDM) is an example in this category. We find that the fluxes are well within the reach of planned experiments for DM candidates that annihilate mainly into quark pairs, and also extend into the multi-GeV range above the background. They are instead suppressed and concentrated at too large energies to emerge above the background if the main annihilation channel is into gauge bosons (such as in particular W+W- in the MDM case).