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Wim de Boer

Publications and source records attributed to Wim de Boer.

22 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

The dark connection between the EGRET excess of diffuse Galactic gamma rays, the Canis Major dwarf, the Monoceros ring, the INTEGRAL 511 keV annihilation line, the gas flaring and the Galactic rotation curve

The EGRET excess of diffuse Galactic gamma rays shows all the key features of dark matter annihilation (DMA) for a WIMP mass in the range 50-100 GeV, especially the distribution of the excess is compatible with a standard halo profile with some additional ringlike substructures at 4 and 13 kpc from the Galactic centre. These substructures coincide with the gravitational potential well expected from the ring of dust at 4 kpc and the tidal stream of dark matter from the Canis Major satellite galaxy at 13 kpc, as deduced from N-body simulations fitting to the Monoceros ring of stars. Strong independent support for this substructure is given by the gas flaring in our Galaxy. The gamma rays from DMA are originating predominantly from the hadronization of mono-energetic quarks, which should produce also a small, but known fraction of protons and antiprotons. Bergstrom et al. an antiproton flux far above the observed antiproton flux and they conclude that the DMA interpretation of the EGRET excess can therefore be excluded. However, they used an isotropic propagation model, i.e. the same diffusive propagation in the disk and the halo. It is shown that an anisotropic propagation model is consistent with the EGRET gamma ray excess, the antiproton flux and the ratios of secondary/primary and unstable/stable cosmic ray particles. Such an anisotropic propagation is supported by the large bulge/disk ratio of the positron annihilation line, as observed by the INTEGRAL satellite. In this case no need for new sources specific to the bulge are needed, so the claimed evidence for strong DMA in the bulge from these observations is strongly propagation model dependent.

astro-ph↗

Radiation hardness of diamond and silicon sensors compared

The radiation hardness of silicon charged particle sensors is compared with single crystal and polycrystalline diamond sensors, both experimentally and theoretically. It is shown that for Si- and C-sensors, the NIEL hypothesis, which states that the signal loss is proportional to the Non-Ionizing Energy Loss, is a good approximation to the present data. At incident proton and neutron energies well above 0.1 GeV the radiation damage is dominated by the inelastic cross section, while at non-relativistic energies the elastic cross section prevails. The smaller inelastic nucleon-Carbon cross section and the light nuclear fragments imply that at high energies diamond is an order of magnitude more radiation hard than silicon, while at energies below 0.1 GeV the difference becomes significantly smaller.

physics.ins-det↗

Global Electroweak Fits and Gauge Coupling Unification

The purpose of this paper is threefold: a) Check if the rather poor Standard Model (SM) fit to all electroweak data can be improved in its minimal supersymmetric extension (MSSM); b) Check what constraints present electroweak data has on the parameter space of the supergravity inspired Constrained MSSM (CMSSM); c) Check if with the present high precision of the gauge coupling constants exact gauge coupling unification is still possible. The value of tanβin the CMSSM is constrained to be above 6.5, while the value of the gaugino masses at the GUT scale has to be above 220 GeV, which corresponds to a lower limit on the lightest neutralino (chargino) of ca. 95 (175) GeV. It is shown that the larger values of α_s from R_l and \sinw from A_FB are consistent with perfect gauge unification. The low α_s value from the hadronic cross section is correlated with the fact that the number of neutrino flavours is 2σbelow the known value of 3 in the SM, which is shown to correspond to a 3sigma deviation in the hadronic cross section. Lowering sigma_{had} by 3sigma brings alpha_s up to 0.12 and N_nu up to 3.

hep-ph↗

Positron Fraction in the CMSSM

A fit to the present data on the cosmic ray positron fraction can be considerably improved,if in addition to the positron production by nuclear interactions in the universe the possible contribution from supersymmetric dark matter annihilation is taken into account. We scan over the complete SUSY parameter space of the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Model (CMSSM) and find that in the acceptable regions the neutralino annihilation into b-bbar quark pairs is the dominant channel with hard positrons emerging from the semileptonic decays of the B-mesons.

astro-ph↗