Quark flavours and the γ-ray spectrum from halo dark matter annihilations

An indirect signature for the presence of exotic particles in the dark halo of our galaxy is the γ-ray flux produced by their annihilations. The cold dark matter (CDM) species annihilate in qanti q and τ+τ- pairs which subsequently hadronize. Using the Lund Monte Carlo, we have systematically simulated the fragmentation of back-to-back quark and antiquark jets and analyzed the resulting π0 and γ-ray spectra for various energies and flavours. Scaling of these spectra obtains for a jet energy Mχ>10 GeV. Jets involving heavy flavours give softer spectra than light quarks. We provide analytic fits of the π0 and photon spectra which may be combined with the annihilation branching ratios of any CDM candidate model to predict the halo γ-ray signal. Provided they annihilate mostly into light quarks and τ leptons, species lighter than ≅ 50 GeV may be detected by a GRO type γ-ray telescope exposed up to a month to high galactic latitudes. We finally investigate the possibility of a clumpy halo where ≅ 1% of the mass concentrates in substructures of typical scale 108 Msun. Would a 1deg angular resolution telescope detect hot spots in the γ-ray sky at high and intermediate galactic latitudes, this would be a 'smoking gun' for the presence of clumps of exotic matter inside the halo. (orig.)