Dark matter vs. astrophysics in the interpretation of AMS-02 electron and positron data

TL;DR

This study analyzes AMS-02 electron and positron data to distinguish between astrophysical sources and dark matter signals, providing constraints on dark matter properties and demonstrating the data's sensitivity to dark matter parameters.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive analysis of how astrophysical sources and dark matter contributions jointly affect cosmic ray observations, improving constraints on dark matter properties.

Findings

AMS-02 data can effectively probe large dark matter parameter space.

Constraints on dark matter annihilation/decay are comparable or stronger than other methods.

Astrophysical sources significantly influence dark matter signal interpretation.

Abstract

We perform a detailed quantitative analysis of the recent AMS-02 electron and positron data. We investigate the interplay between the emission from primary astrophysical sources, namely Supernova Remnants and Pulsar Wind Nebulae, and the contribution from a dark matter annihilation or decay signal. Our aim is to assess the information that can be derived on dark matter properties when both dark matter and primary astrophysical sources are assumed to jointly contribute to the leptonic observables measured by the AMS-02 experiment. We investigate both the possibility to set robust constraints on the dark matter annihilation/decay rate and the possibility to look for dark matter signals within realistic models that take into account the full complexity of the astrophysical background. Our results show that AMS-02 data enable to probe efficiently vast regions of the dark matter parameter space and, in some cases, to set constraints on the dark matter annihilation/decay rate that are comparable or even stronger than the ones derived from other indirect detection channels.