Reevaluation of the cosmic antideuteron flux from cosmic-ray interactions and from exotic sources

TL;DR

This paper provides the latest calculations of cosmic-ray antideuteron fluxes from both standard cosmic-ray interactions and exotic sources, incorporating recent cross-section measurements and multiple models to address uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces the first inclusion of recent inelastic cross-section data in flux calculations and compares various models to quantify uncertainties.

Findings

Updated flux predictions with reduced uncertainties

Inclusion of recent ALICE cross-section measurements

Comparison of different production and propagation models

Abstract

Cosmic-ray antideuterons could be a key for the discovery of exotic phenomena in our Galaxy, such as dark-matter annihilations or primordial black hole evaporation. Unfortunately the theoretical predictions of the antideuteron flux at Earth are plagued with uncertainties from the mechanism of antideuteron production and propagation in the Galaxy. We present the most up-to-date calculation of the antideuteron fluxes from cosmic-ray collisions with the interstellar medium and from exotic processes. We include for the first time the antideuteron inelastic interaction cross section recently measured by the ALICE collaboration to account for the loss of antideuterons during propagation. In order to bracket the uncertainty in the expected fluxes, we consider several state-of-the-art models of antideuteron production and of cosmic-ray propagation.