Cosmic-ray antiprotons in the AMS-02 era: A sensitive probe of dark matter

TL;DR

This paper reviews how cosmic-ray antiprotons, especially from AMS-02 data, can be used to detect or constrain dark matter, highlighting recent limits, potential signals, and the importance of systematic errors.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of recent advances in using AMS-02 antiproton data to search for dark matter, including modeling improvements and error analysis.

Findings

Constraints on heavy dark matter from antiproton data

Possible tentative signal for dark matter annihilation below 100 GeV

Progress in modeling secondary production cross sections

Abstract

Cosmic-ray antiprotons are a powerful tool for astroparticle physics. While the bulk of measured antiprotons is consistent with a secondary origin, the precise data of the AMS-02 experiment provides us with encouraging prospects to search for a subdominant primary component, e.g. from dark matter. In this brief review, we discuss recent limits on heavy dark matter as well as a tentative signal from annihilation of dark matter with a mass $\lesssim 100$ GeV. We emphasize the special role of systematic errors that can affect the signal. In particular, we discuss recent progress in the modeling of secondary production cross sections and correlated errors in the AMS-02 data, the dominant ones originating from uncertainties in the cross sections for cosmic-ray absorption in the detector.