Published October 15, 2007 | Version v1
Journal article

Antiproton and positron signal enhancement in dark matter minispikes scenarios

  • 1. Laboratoire d'Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique des Particules LAPP, Universite de Savoie, CNRS/IN2P3, 74941 Annecy-le-vieux (France)
  • 2. Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095-CNRS, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, 75014 Paris (France)
  • 3. INFN, Sezione di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, Padova I-35131 (Italy)
  • 4. Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille CPPM, Universite de la Mediterannee, CNRS/IN2P3, 13288 Marseille (France)
  • 5. Laboratoire d'Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique Theorique LAPTH, Universite de Savoie, CNRS/IN2P3, 74941 Annecy-le-vieux (France)

Description

The annihilation of dark matter (DM) in the Galaxy could produce specific imprints on the spectra of antimatter species in Galactic cosmic rays, which could be detected by upcoming experiments such as PAMELA and AMS02. Recent studies show that the presence of substructures can enhance the annihilation signal by a 'boost factor' that not only depends on energy, but that is intrinsically a statistical property of the distribution of DM substructures inside the Milky Way. We investigate a scenario in which substructures consist of ∼100 'minispikes' around intermediate-mass black holes. Focusing on primary positrons and antiprotons, we find large boost factors, up to a few thousand, that exhibit a large variance at high energy in the case of positrons and at low energy in the case of antiprotons. As a consequence, an estimate of the DM particle mass based on the observed cutoff in the positron spectrum could lead to a substantial underestimate of its actual value

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
76
Journal Issue
8
Journal Page Range
p. 083506-083506.13
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2007 The American Physical Society