Status of cosmic-ray antideuteron searches

Abstract

The precise measurement of cosmic-ray antiparticles serves as important means for identifying the nature of dark matter. Recent years showed that identifying the nature of dark matter with cosmic-ray positrons and higher energy antiprotons is difficult, and has lead to a significantly increased interest in cosmic-ray antideuteron searches. Antideuterons may also be generated in dark matter annihilations or decays, offering a potential breakthrough in unexplored phase space for dark matter. Low-energy antideuterons are an important approach because the flux from dark matter interactions exceeds the background flux by more than two orders of magnitude in the low-energy range for a wide variety of models. This review is based on the "dbar14 - dedicated cosmic-ray antideuteron workshop", which brought together theorists and experimentalists in the field to discuss the current status, perspectives, and challenges for cosmic-ray antideuteron searches and discusses the motivation for antideuteron searches, the theoretical and experimental uncertainties of antideuteron production and propagation in our Galaxy, as well as give an experimental cosmic-ray antideuteron search status update. This report is a condensed summary of the article "Review of the theoretical and experimental status of dark matter identification with cosmic-ray antideuteron" (arXiv:1505.07785).