arXiv subjects

Pierre Salati

Publications and source records attributed to Pierre Salati.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Dark Matter Annihilation in the Universe

The astronomical dark matter is an essential component of the Universe and yet its nature is still unresolved. It could be made of neutral and massive elementary particles which are their own antimatter partners. These dark matter species undergo mutual annihilations whose effects are briefly reviewed in this article. Dark matter annihilation plays a key role at early times as it sets the relic abundance of the particles once they have decoupled from the primordial plasma. A weak annihilation cross section naturally leads to a cosmological abundance in agreement with observations. Dark matter species subsequently annihilate - or decay - during Big Bang nucleosynthesis and could play havoc with the light element abundances unless they offer a possible solution to the $^{7}$Li problem. They could also reionize the intergalactic medium after recombination and leave visible imprints in the cosmic microwave background. But one of the most exciting aspects of the question lies in the possibility to indirectly detect the dark matter species through the rare antimatter particles - antiprotons, positrons and anti-deuterons - which they produce as they currently annihilate inside the galactic halo. Finally, the effects of dark matter annihilation on stars is discussed.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2013

TeV cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra in the myriad model

Recent measurements of cosmic ray proton and helium spectra show a hardening above a few hundreds of GeV. This excess is hard to understand in the framework of the conventional models of Galactic cosmic ray production and propagation. We propose here to explain this anomaly by the presence of local sources (myriad model). Cosmic ray propagation is described as a diffusion process taking place inside a two-zone magnetic halo. We calculate the proton and helium fluxes at the Earth between 50 GeV and 100 TeV. Improving over a similar analysis, we consistently derive these fluxes by taking into account both local and remote sources for which a unique injection rate is assumed. We find cosmic ray propagation parameters compatible with B/C measurements and for which the proton and helium spectra remarkably agree with the PAMELA and CREAM measurements over four decades in energy.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2012

Dark Matter Indirect Signatures

The astronomical dark matter could be made of weakly interacting and massive particles. If so, these species would be abundant inside the Milky Way, where they would continuously annihilate and produce cosmic rays. Those annihilation products are potentially detectable at the Earth, and could provide indirect clues for the presence of dark matter species within the Galaxy. We will review here the various cosmic radiations which the dark matter can produce. We will examine how they propagate throughout the Milky Way and compare the dark matter yields with what pure astrophysical processes are expected to generate. The presence of dark matter substructures might enhance the signals and will be briefly discussed.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Systematic effects in the estimate of the local gamma-ray emissivity

We show in this letter that estimates of the local emissivity of γ-rays in the GeV-TeV range suffer uncertainties which are of the same order of magnitude as the current Fermi results. Primary cosmic-ray fluxes, cosmic-ray propagation, interstellar helium abundance and γ-ray production crosssections all affect the estimate of this quantity. We also show that the so-called nuclear enhancement factor -- though widely used so far to model the γ-ray emissivity -- is no longer a relevant quantity given the latest measurements of the primary cosmic ray proton and helium spectra.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

The GeV-TeV Galactic gamma-ray diffuse emission I. Uncertainties in the predictions of the hadronic component

The Galactic gamma-ray diffuse emission is currently observed in the GeV-TeV energy range with unprecedented accuracy by the Fermi satellite. Understanding this component is crucial as it provides a background to many different signals such as extragalactic sources or annihilating dark matter. It is timely to reinvestigate how it is calculated and to assess the various uncertainties which are likely to affect the accuracy of the predictions. The Galactic gamma-ray diffuse emission is mostly produced above a few GeV by the interactions of cosmic ray primaries impinging on the interstellar material. The theoretical error on that component is derived by exploring various potential sources of uncertainty. Particular attention is paid to cosmic ray propagation. Nuclear cross sections, the proton and helium fluxes at the Earth, the Galactic radial profile of supernova remnants and the hydrogen distribution can also severely affect the signal. The propagation of cosmic ray species throughout the Galaxy is described in the framework of a semi-analytic two-zone diffusion/convection model. This allows to convert the constraints set by the boron-to-carbon data into a theoretical uncertainty on the diffuse emission. New deconvolutions of the HI and CO sky maps are also used to get the hydrogen distribution within the Galaxy. The thickness of the cosmic ray diffusive halo is found to have a significant effect on the Galactic gamma-ray diffuse emission while the interplay between diffusion and convection has little influence on the signal. The uncertainties related to nuclear cross sections and to the primary cosmic ray fluxes at the Earth are significant. The radial distribution of supernova remnants along the Galactic plane turns out to be a key ingredient. As expected, the predictions are extremely sensitive to the spatial distribution of hydrogen within the Milky Way.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Implication of the PAMELA antiproton data for dark matter indirect detection at LHC

Since the PAMELA results on the "anomalously" high positron fraction and the lack of antiproton excess in our Galaxy, there has been a tremendous number of studies advocating new types of dark matter, with larger couplings to electrons than to quarks. This raises the question of the production of dark matter particles (and heavy associated coloured states) at LHC. Here, we explore a very simple benchmark dark matter model and show that, in spite of the agreement between the PAMELA antiproton measurements and the expected astrophysical secondary background, there is room for large couplings of a WIMP candidate to heavy quarks. Contrary to what could have been naively anticipated, the PAMELA pbar/p measurements do not challenge dark matter model building, as far as the quark sector is concerned. A quarkophillic species is therefore not forbidden.Owing to these large couplings, one would expect that a new production channel opens up at the LHC, through quark--quark and quark--gluon interactions. Alas, when the PDF of the quark is taken into account, prospects for a copious production fade away.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Cosmic ray lepton puzzle in the light of cosmological N-body simulations

The PAMELA and ATIC collaborations have recently reported an excess in the cosmic ray positron and electron fluxes. These lepton anomalies might be related to cold dark matter (CDM) particles annihilating within a nearby dark matter clump. We outline regions of the parameter space for both the dark matter subhalo and particle model, where data from the different experiments are reproduced. We then confront this interpretation of the data with the results of the cosmological N-body simulation Via Lactea II. Having a sizable clump (Vmax = 9km/s) at a distance of only 1.2 kpc could explain the PAMELA excess, but such a configuration has a probability of only 0.37 percent. Reproducing also the ATIC bump would require a very large, nearby subhalo, which is extremely unlikely (p~3.10^-5). In either case, we predict Fermi will detect the gamma-ray emission from the subhalo. We conclude that under canonical assumptions, the cosmic ray lepton anomalies are unlikely to originate from a nearby CDM subhalo.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2009

Intermediate Mass Black Holes and Nearby Dark Matter Point Sources: A Critical Reassessment

The proposal of a galactic population of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs), forming dark matter (DM) ``mini-spikes'' around them, has received considerable attention in recent years. In fact, leading in some scenarios to large annihilation fluxes in gamma rays, neutrinos and charged cosmic rays, these objects are sometimes quoted as one of the most promising targets for indirect DM searches. In this letter, we apply a detailed statistical analysis to point out that the existing EGRET data already place very stringent limits on those scenarios, making it rather unlikely that any of these objects will be observed with, e.g., the Fermi/GLAST satellite or upcoming Air Cherenkov telescopes. We also demonstrate that prospects for observing signals in neutrinos or charged cosmic rays seem even worse. Finally, we address the question of whether the excess in the cosmic ray positron/electron flux recently reported by PAMELA/ATIC could be due to a nearby DM point source like a DM clump or mini-spike; gamma-ray bounds, as well as the recently released Fermi cosmic ray electron and positron data, again exclude such a possibility for conventional DM candidates, and strongly constrain it for DM purely annihilating into light leptons.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

Anti-Matter in Cosmic Rays : Backgrounds and Signals

Recent PAMELA and ATIC data seem to indicate an excess in positron cosmic rays above approximately 10 GeV which might be due to galactic Dark Matter particle annihilation. However the background of this signal suffers many uncertainties that make our task difficult in constraining Dark Matter or any other astrophysical explanation for these recent surprising data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

The Cosmic Ray Signature of Dark Matter Caustics

Gravitational collapse of dark matter, merger of dark matter haloes and tidal disruption of satellites are among processes which lead to the formation of fine and dense dark matter shells, also known as dark matter caustics. The putative weakly interacting species which may form the dark matter are expected to strongly annihilate in these dense regions of the Milky Way halo and generate in particular antiprotons and positrons. We derive the flux of these rare antimatter particles at the Earth and show that it depends significantly on the cut-off radius of the dark matter distribution at the galactic centre. Boost factors of ~30 are found with respect to a smooth NFW profile for high-energy antiprotons and low-energy positrons if this cut-off radius is taken to be 300 pc -- a somewhat extreme value though. This yields a detectable antiproton signal around hundreds of Gev in models where the annihilation cross section today is enhanced by non--perturbative effects as in the generic case of a heavy Wino. However, dark matter caustics cannot provide a better explanation for the HEAT excess reported above ~10 GeV than a smooth NFW or isothermal cored distribution.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

The galactic antiproton spectrum at high energies: background expectation vs. exotic contributions

A new generation of upcoming space-based experiments will soon start to probe the spectrum of cosmic ray antiparticles with an unprecedented accuracy and, in particular, will open up a window to energies much higher than those accessible so far. It is thus timely to carefully investigate the expected antiparticle fluxes at high energies. Here, we perform such an analysis for the case of antiprotons. We consider both standard sources as the collision of other cosmic rays with interstellar matter, as well as exotic contributions from dark matter annihilations in the galactic halo. Up to energies well above 100 GeV, we find that the background flux in antiprotons is almost uniquely determined by the existing low-energy data on various cosmic ray species; for even higher energies, however, the uncertainties in the parameters of the underlying propagation model eventually become significant. We also show that if the dark matter is composed of particles with masses at the TeV scale, which is naturally expected in extra-dimensional models as well as in certain parameter regions of supersymmetric models, the annihilation flux can become comparable to - or even dominate - the antiproton background at the high energies considered here.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

Neutralino Clumps and Cosmic Rays

The halo of the Miky Way might contain numerous and dense substructures inside which the putative weakly interacting massive particles (suggested as the main constituent of the astronomical dark matter) would produce a stronger annihilation signal than in the smooth regions. The closer the nearest clump, the larger the positron and antiproton cosmic ray fluxes at the Earth. But the actual distribution of these substructures is not known. The predictions on the antimatter yields at the Earth are therefore affected by a kind of cosmic variance whose analysis is the subject of this contribution. The statistical tools to achieve that goal are presented and Monte Carlo simulations are compared to analytic results.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Clumpiness of Dark Matter and Positron Annihilation Signal: Computing the odds of the Galactic Lottery

The small-scale distribution of dark matter in Galactic halos is poorly known. Several studies suggest that it could be very clumpy, which turns out to be of paramount importance when investigating the annihilation signal from exotic particles (e.g. supersymmetric or Kaluza-Klein). In this paper we focus on the annihilation signal in positrons. We estimate the associated uncertainty, due to the fact that we do not know exactly how the clumps are distributed in the Galactic halo. To this aim, we perform a statistical study based on analytical computations, as well as numerical simulations. In particular, we study the average and variance of the annihilation signal over many Galactic halos having the same statistical properties. We find that the so-called boost factor used by many authors should be handled with care, as i) it depends on energy and ii) it may be different for positrons, antiprotons and gamma rays, a fact which has not received any attention before. As an illustration, we use our results to discuss the positron spectrum measurements by the HEAT experiment.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Is the dark matter interpretation of the EGRET gamma excess compatible with antiproton measurements?

We investigate the internal consistency of the halo dark matter model which has been proposed by de Boer et al. to explain the excess of diffuse galactic gamma rays observed by the EGRET experiment. Any model based on dark matter annihilation into quark jets, such as the supersymmetric model proposed by de Boer et al., inevitably also predicts a primary flux of antiprotons from the same jets. Since propagation of the antiprotons in the unconventional, disk-dominated type of halo model used by de Boer et al. is strongly constrained by the measured ratio of boron to carbon nuclei in cosmic rays, we investigate the viability of the model using the DarkSUSY package to compute the gamma-ray and antiproton fluxes. We are able to show that their model is excluded by a wide margin from the measured flux of antiprotons. We therefore find that a model of the type suggested by Moskalenko et al., where the intensities of protons and electrons in the cosmic rays vary with galactic position, is far more plausible to explain the gamma excess.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Production of antimatter in the galaxy

The astronomical dark matter could be made of weakly interacting massive species whose mutual annihilations should produce antimatter particles and distortions in the corresponding energy spectra. The propagation of cosmic rays inside the Milky Way plays a crucial role and is briefly presented. The uncertainties in its description lead to considerable variations in the predicted primary fluxes. This point is illustrated with antiprotons. Finally, the various forthcoming projects are rapidly reviewed with their potential reach.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2005

Kaluza-Klein Dark Matter and Galactic Antiprotons

Extra dimensions offer new ways to address long-standing problems in beyond the standard model particle physics. In some classes of extra-dimensional models, the lightest Kaluza-Klein particle is a viable dark matter candidate. In this work, we study indirect detection of Kaluza-Klein dark matter via its annihilation into antiprotons. We use a sophisticated galactic cosmic ray diffusion model whose parameters are fully constrained by an extensive set of experimental data. We discuss how fluxes of cosmic antiprotons can be used to exclude low Kaluza-Klein masses.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2004

The effects of discreteness of galactic cosmic rays sources

Most studies of GeV Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) nuclei assume a steady state/continuous distribution for the sources of cosmic rays, but this distribution is actually discrete in time and in space. The current progress in our understanding of cosmic ray physics (acceleration, propagation), the required consistency in explaining several GCRs manifestation (nuclei, $γ$,...) as well as the precision of present and future space missions (e.g. INTEGRAL, AMS, AGILE, GLAST) point towards the necessity to go beyond this approximation. A steady state semi-analytical model that describes well many nuclei data has been developed in the past years based on this approximation, as well as others. We wish to extend it to a time dependent version, including discrete sources. As a first step, the validity of several approximations of the model we use are checked to validate the approach: i) the effect of the radial variation of the interstellar gas density is inspected and ii) the effect of a specific modeling for the galactic wind (linear vs constant) is discussed. In a second step, the approximation of using continuous sources in space is considered. This is completed by a study of time discreteness through the time-dependent version of the propagation equation. A new analytical solution of this equation for instantaneous point-like sources, including the effect of escape, galactic wind and spallation, is presented. Application of time and space discretness to definite propagation conditions and realistic distributions of sources will be presented in a future paper.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2004

Diffusion in a slab: different approaches

Different approaches are presented to investigate diffusion from a point source in a slab delimited by two absorbing boundaries consisting of parallel infinite planes. These approaches enable to consider the effect of absorption at the boundaries as well as the possibility that the particles that diffuse react with the diffusive medium.

physics.gen-ph↗