General Analysis of Antideuteron Searches for Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of low energy cosmic ray antideuterons as an indirect detection method for dark matter, analyzing flux predictions for various models and future experiments like AMS-02 and GAPS.

Contribution

It provides detailed flux calculations for antideuterons from dark matter annihilation across multiple models and assesses the detection prospects with upcoming experiments.

Findings

Antideuterons offer a promising detection channel for electroweak scale dark matter.

Future experiments can probe dark matter masses well above 100 GeV.

Antideuteron detection remains viable even when direct detection rates are suppressed.

Abstract

Low energy cosmic ray antideuterons provide a unique low background channel for indirect detection of dark matter. We compute the cosmic ray flux of antideuterons from hadronic annihilations of dark matter for various Standard Model final states and determine the mass reach of two future experiments (AMS-02 and GAPS) designed to greatly increase the sensitivity of antideuteron detection over current bounds. We consider generic models of scalar, fermion, and massive vector bosons as thermal dark matter, describe their basic features relevant to direct and indirect detection, and discuss the implications of direct detection bounds on models of dark matter as a thermal relic. We also consider specific dark matter candidates and assess their potential for detection via antideuterons from their hadronic annihilation channels. Since the dark matter mass reach of the GAPS experiment can be well above 100 GeV, we find that antideuterons can be a good indirect detection channel for a variety of thermal relic electroweak scale dark matter candidates, even when the rate for direct detection is highly suppressed.