PAMELA, DAMA, INTEGRAL and Signatures of Metastable Excited WIMPs

Models of dark matter with ~ GeV scale force mediators provide attractive explanations of many high energy anomalies, including PAMELA, ATIC, and the WMAP haze. At the same time, by exploiting the ~ MeV scale excited states that are automatically present in such theories, these models naturally explain the DAMA/LIBRA and INTEGRAL signals through the inelastic dark matter (iDM) and exciting dark matter (XDM) scenarios, respectively. Interestingly, with only weak kinetic mixing to hypercharge to mediate decays, the lifetime of excited states with delta < 2 m_e is longer than the age of the universe. The fractional relic abundance of these excited states depends on the temperature of kinetic decoupling, but can be appreciable. There could easily be other mechanisms for rapid decay, but the consequences of such long-lived states are intriguing. We find that CDMS constrains the fractional relic population of ~100 keV states to be <~ 10^-2, for a 1 TeV WIMP with sigma_n = 10^-40 cm^2. Upcoming searches at CDMS, as well as xenon, silicon, and argon targets, can push this limit significantly lower. We also consider the possibility that the DAMA excitation occurs from a metastable state into the XDM state, which decays via e+e- emission, which allows lighter states to explain the INTEGRAL signal due to the small kinetic energies required. Such models yield dramatic signals from down-scattering, with spectra peaking at high energies, sometimes as high as ~1 MeV, well outside the usual search windows. Such signals would be visible at future Ar and Si experiments, and may be visible at Ge and Xe experiments. We also consider other XDM models involving ~ 500 keV metastable states, and find they can allow lighter WIMPs to explain INTEGRAL as well.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Constraints on the SZ Power Spectrum on Degree Angular Scales in WMAP Data

The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect has a distinct spectral signature that allows its separation from fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and foregrounds. Using CMB anisotropies measured in Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe's five-year maps, we constrain the SZ fluctuations at large, degree angular scales corresponding to multipoles in the range from 10 to 400. We provide upper bounds on SZ fluctuations at multipoles greater than 50, and find evidence for a hemispherically asymmetric signal at ten degrees angular scales. The amplitude of the detected signal cannot be easily explained with the allowed number density and temperature of electrons in the Galactic halo. We have failed to explain the excess signal as a residual from known Galactic foregrounds or instrumental uncertainties such as 1/f-noise.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Simple typos fixe

Sommerfeld Enhancement of DM Annihilation: Resonance Structure, Freeze-Out and CMB Spectral Bound

In the last few years there has been some interest in WIMP Dark Matter models featuring a velocity dependent cross section through the Sommerfeld enhancement mechanism, which is a nonrelativistic effect due to massive bosons in the dark sector. In the first part of this article, we find analytic expressions for the boost factor for three different model potentials, the Coulomb potential, the spherical well and the spherical cone well and compare with the numerical solution of the Yukawa potential. We find that the resonance pattern of all the potentials can be cast into the same universal form. In the second part of the article we perform a detailed computation of the Dark Matter relic density for models having Sommerfeld enhancement by solving the Boltzmann equation numerically. We calculate the expected distortions of the CMB blackbody spectrum from WIMP annihilations and compare these to the bounds set by FIRAS. We conclude that only a small part of the parameter space can be ruled out by the FIRAS observations.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, version accepted by JCA

Foreground removal from WMAP 7yr polarization maps using an MLP neural network

One of the fundamental problems in extracting the cosmic microwave background signal (CMB) from millimeter/submillimeter observations is the pollution by emission from the Milky Way: synchrotron, free-free, and thermal dust emission. To extract the fundamental cosmological parameters from CMB signal, it is mandatory to minimize this pollution since it will create systematic errors in the CMB power spectra. In previous investigations, it has been demonstrated that the neural network method provide high quality CMB maps from temperature data. Here the analysis is extended to polarization maps. As a concrete example, the WMAP 7-year polarization data, the most reliable determination of the polarization properties of the CMB, has been analysed. The analysis has adopted the frequency maps, noise models, window functions and the foreground models as provided by the WMAP Team, and no auxiliary data is included. Within this framework it is demonstrated that the network can extract the CMB polarization signal with no sign of pollution by the polarized foregrounds. The errors in the derived polarization power spectra are improved compared to the errors derived by the WMAP Team.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Pulsars as the Source of the WMAP Haze

The WMAP haze is an excess in the 22 to 93 GHz frequency bands of WMAP extending about 10 degrees from the galactic center. We show that synchrotron emission from electron-positron pairs injected into the interstellar medium by the galactic population of pulsars with energies in the 1 to 100 GeV range can explain the frequency spectrum of the WMAP haze and the drop in the average haze power with latitude. The same spectrum of high energy electron-positron pairs from pulsars, which gives rise to the haze, may also generate the observed excesses in AMS, HEAT and PAMELA. We discuss the spatial morphology of the pulsar synchrotron signal and its deviation from spherical symmetry, which may provide an avenue to determine the pulsar contribution to the haze.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. Corrected errors in fig 1-3 and added discussion of the detailed spatial morphology of the haze signa

Systematic effects in the extraction of the 'WMAP haze'

The extraction of a 'haze' from the WMAP microwave skymaps is based on subtraction of known foregrounds, viz. free-free (bremsstrahlung), thermal dust and synchrotron, each traced by other skymaps. While the 408 MHz all-sky survey is used for the synchrotron template, the WMAP bands are at tens of GHz where the spatial distribution of the radiating cosmic ray electrons ought to be quite different because of the energy-dependence of their diffusion in the Galaxy. The systematic uncertainty this introduces in the residual skymap is comparable to the claimed haze and can, for certain source distributions, have a very similar spectrum and latitudinal profile and even a somewhat similar morphology. Hence caution must be exercised in interpreting the 'haze' as a physical signature of, e.g., dark matter annihilation in the Galactic centre.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures; improved diffusion model; extended discussion of spectral index maps; clarifying comments, figures and references added; to appear in JCA

Non-Abelian Dark Sectors and Their Collider Signatures

Motivated by the recent proliferation of observed astrophysical anomalies, Arkani-Hamed et al. have proposed a model in which dark matter is charged under a non-abelian "dark" gauge symmetry that is broken at ~ 1 GeV. In this paper, we present a survey of concrete models realizing such a scenario, followed by a largely model-independent study of collider phenomenology relevant to the Tevatron and the LHC. We address some model building issues that are easily surmounted to accommodate the astrophysics. While SUSY is not necessary, we argue that it is theoretically well-motivated because the GeV scale is automatically generated. Specifically, we propose a novel mechanism by which mixed D-terms in the dark sector induce either SUSY breaking or a super-Higgs mechanism precisely at a GeV. Furthermore, we elaborate on the original proposal of Arkani-Hamed et al. in which the dark matter acts as a messenger of gauge mediation to the dark sector. In our collider analysis we present cross-sections for dominant production channels and lifetime estimates for primary decay modes. We find that dark gauge bosons can be produced at the Tevatron and the LHC, either through a process analogous to prompt photon production or through a rare Z decay channel. Dark gauge bosons will decay back to the SM via "lepton jets" which typically contain >2 and as many as 8 leptons, significantly improving their discovery potential. Since SUSY decays from the MSSM will eventually cascade down to these lepton jets, the discovery potential for direct electroweak-ino production may also be improved. Exploiting the unique kinematics, we find that it is possible to reconstruct the mass of the MSSM LSP. We also present decay channels with displaced vertices and multiple leptons with partially correlated impact parameters.Comment: 44 pages, 25 figures, version published in JHE

Foreground removal from CMB temperature maps using an MLP neural network

One of the main obstacles in extracting the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) signal from observations in the mm-submm range is the foreground contamination by emission from galactic components: mainly synchrotron, free-free and thermal dust emission. Due to the statistical nature of the intrinsic CMB signal it is essential to minimize the systematic errors in the CMB temperature determinations. Following the available knowledge of the spectral behavior of the galactic foregrounds simple, power law-like spectra have been assumed. The feasibility of using a simple neural network for extracting the CMB temperature signal from the combined CMB and foreground signals has been investigated. As a specific example, we have analysed simulated data, like that expected from the ESA Planck Surveyor mission. A simple multilayer perceptron neural network with 2 hidden layers can provide temperature estimates, over more than 80 percent of the sky, that are to a high degree uncorrelated with the foreground signals. A single network will be able to cover the dynamic range of the Planck noise level over the entire sky.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Probing Cosmic Strings with Satellite CMB measurements

We study the problem of searching for cosmic string signal patterns in the present high resolution and high sensitivity observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This article discusses a technique capable of recognizing Kaiser-Stebbins effect signatures in total intensity anisotropy maps, and shows that the biggest factor that produces confusion is represented by the acoustic oscillation features of the scale comparable to the size of horizon at recombination. Simulations show that the distribution of null signals for pure Gaussian maps converges to a $\chi^2$ distribution, with detectability threshold corresponding to a string induced step signal with an amplitude of about 100 \muK which corresponds to a limit of roughly $G\mu < 1.5\times 10^{-6}$. We study the statistics of spurious detections caused by extra-Galactic and Galactic foregrounds. For diffuse Galactic foregrounds, which represents the dominant source of contamination, we derive sky masks outlining the available region of the sky where the Galactic confusion is sub-dominant, specializing our analysis to the case represented by the frequency coverage and nominal sensitivity and resolution of the Planck experiment.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to be published in JCA

Abelian Hidden Sectors at a GeV

We discuss mechanisms for naturally generating GeV-scale hidden sectors in the context of weak-scale supersymmetry. Such low mass scales can arise when hidden sectors are more weakly coupled to supersymmetry breaking than the visible sector, as happens when supersymmetry breaking is communicated to the visible sector by gauge interactions under which the hidden sector is uncharged, or if the hidden sector is sequestered from gravity-mediated supersymmetry breaking. We study these mechanisms in detail in the context of gauge and gaugino mediation, and present specific models of Abelian GeV-scale hidden sectors. In particular, we discuss kinetic mixing of a U(1)_x gauge force with hypercharge, singlets or bi-fundamentals which couple to both sectors, and additional loop effects. Finally, we investigate the possible relevance of such sectors for dark matter phenomenology, as well as for low- and high-energy collider searches.Comment: 43 pages, no figures; v2: to match JHEP versio