Consistency test of the AMS-02 antiproton excess with direct detection data based on the effective field theory approach

TL;DR

This paper examines whether dark matter explanations for the AMS-02 antiproton excess are consistent with null results from direct detection experiments, using an effective field theory framework to analyze different operators.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of dimension-five and -six operators, identifying which can explain the antiproton excess without conflicting with direct detection constraints.

Findings

Only one dimension-five operator can explain the excess.

One dimension-six operator is compatible with data.

Most operators are excluded or invalid within the EFT approach.

Abstract

The potential antiproton excess in the AMS-02 data is of much interest and can probably come from dark matter annihilations. Based on the effective field theory approach, in this work we investigate the compatibility of the DM interpretation of the AMS-02 antiproton excess and the null results from direct detection experiments, LUX, PandaX-II, and XENON1T. We focus on dimension-five and -six operators with fermion DM. Only one of dimension-five and one of dimension-six operators can successfully account for the antiproton excess, while the rest either are excluded by direct detection or require very small cut-off scales which invalidate the effective field theory approach.