Thermal stability of cold clouds in galaxy halos

We consider the thermal properties of cold, dense clouds of molecular hydrogen and atomic helium. For cloud masses below 10^-1.7 Msun, the internal pressure is sufficient to permit the existence of particles of solid or liquid hydrogen at temperatures above the microwave background temperature. Optically thin thermal continuum emission by these particles can balance cosmic-ray heating of the cloud, leading to equilibria which are thermally stable even though the heating rate is independent of cloud temperature. For the Galaxy, the known heating rate in the disk sets a minimum mass of order 10^-6 Msun necessary for survival. Clouds of this type may in principle comprise most of the dark matter in the Galactic halo. However, we caution that the equilibria do not exist at redshifts z > 1 when the temperature of the microwave background was substantially larger than its current value; the formation and survival of such clouds to the present epoch therefore remain open questions.Comment: 5 pp incl 2 figs, LaTeX, emulateapj.sty; ApJ Letters in press. Significant revisions, results qualitatively unchange

Is the Large Magellanic Cloud a Large Microlensing Cloud?

An expression is provided for the self-lensing optical depth of the thin LMC disk surrounded by a shroud of stars at larger scale heights. The formula is written in terms of the vertical velocity dispersion of the thin disk population. If tidal forcing causes 1-5 % of the disk mass to have a height larger than 6 kpc and 10-15 % to have a height above 3 kpc, then the self-lensing optical depth of the LMC is $0.7 - 1.9 \times 10^{-7}$, which is within the observational uncertainties. The shroud may be composed of bright stars provided they are not in stellar hydrodynamical equilibrium. Alternatively, the shroud may be built from low mass stars or compact objects, though then the self-lensing optical depths are overestimates of the true optical depth by a factor of roughly 3. The distributions of timescales of the events and their spatial variation across the face of the LMC disk offer possibilities of identifying the dominant lens population. In propitious circumstances, an experiment lifetime of less than 5 years is sufficient to decide between the competing claims of Milky Way halos and LMC lenses. However, LMC disks can sometimes mimic the microlensing properties of Galactic halos for many years and then decades of survey work are needed. In this case observations of parallax or binary caustic events offer the best hope for current experiments to deduce the lens population. The difficult models to distinguish are Milky Way halos in which the lens fraction is low (< 10 %) and fattened LMC disks composed of lenses with a typical mass of low luminosity stars or greater. A next-generation wide-area microlensing survey, such as the proposed ``SuperMACHO'' experiment, will be able to distinguish even these difficult models with just a year or two of data.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, The Astrophysical Journal (in press

Self-Lensing Models of the LMC

All of the proposed explanations for the microlensing events observed towards the LMC have difficulties. One of these proposed explanations, LMC self-lensing, which invokes ordinary LMC stars as the long sought-after lenses, has recently gained considerable popularity as a possible solution to the microlensing conundrum. In this paper, we carefully examine the set of LMC self-lensing models. In particular, we review the pertinent observations made of the LMC, and show how these observations place limits on such self-lensing models. We find that, given current observational constraints, no purely LMC disk models are capable of producing optical depths as large as that reported in the MACHO collaboration 2-year analysis. Besides pure disk, we also consider alternate geometries, and present a framework which encompasses the previous studies of LMC self-lensing. We discuss which model parameters need to be pushed in order for such models to succeed. For example, like previous workers, we find that an LMC halo geometry may be able to explain the observed events. However, since all known LMC tracer stellar populations exhibit disk-like kinematics, such models will have difficulty being reconciled with observations. For SMC self-lensing, we find predicted optical depths differing from previous results, but more than sufficient to explain all observed SMC microlensing. In contrast, for the LMC we find a self-lensing optical depth contribution between 0.47e-8 and 7.84e-8, with 2.44e-8 being the value for the set of LMC parameters most consistent with current observations.Comment: 20 pages, Latex, 14 figures, submitted to Ap

On the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect from dark matter annihilation or decay in galaxy clusters

We revisit the prospects for detecting the Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) effect induced by dark matter (DM) annihilation or decay. We show that with standard (or even extreme) assumptions for DM properties, the optical depth associated with relativistic electrons injected from DM annihilation or decay is much smaller than that associated with thermal electrons, when averaged over the angular resolution of current and future experiments. For example, we find: $\tau_{\rm DM} \sim 10^{-9}-10^{-5}$ (depending on the assumptions) for \mchi = 1 GeV and a density profile $\rho\propto r^{-1}$ for a template cluster located at 50 Mpc and observed within an angular resolution of $10"$, compared to $\tau_{\rm th}\sim 10^{-3}-10^{-2}$. This, together with a full spectral analysis, enables us to demonstrate that, for a template cluster with generic properties, the SZ effect due to DM annihilation or decay is far below the sensitivity of the Planck satellite. This is at variance with previous claims regarding heavier annihilating DM particles. Should DM be made of lighter particles, the current constraints from 511 keV observations on the annihilation cross section or decay rate still prevent a detectable SZ effect. Finally, we show that spatial diffusion sets a core of a few kpc in the electron distribution, even for very cuspy DM profiles, such that improving the angular resolution of the instrument, e.g. with ALMA, does not necessarily improve the detection potential. We provide useful analytical formulae parameterized in terms of the DM mass, decay rate or annihilation cross section and DM halo features, that allow quick estimates of the SZ effect induced by any given candidate and any DM halo profile.Comment: 27 p, 6 figs, additional section on spatial diffusion effects. Accepted for publication in JCA

Anomaly mediated SUSY breaking scenarios in the light of cosmology and in the dark (matter)

Anomaly mediation is a popular and well motivated supersymmetry breaking scenario. Different possible detailed realisations of this set-up are studied and actively searched for at colliders. Apart from limits coming from flavour, low energy physics and direct collider searches, these models are usually constrained by the requirement of reproducing the observations on dark matter density in the universe. We reanalyse these bounds and in particular we focus on the dark matter bounds both considering the standard cosmological model and alternative cosmological scenarios. These scenarios do not change the observable cosmology but relic dark matter density bounds strongly depend on them. We consider few benchmark points excluded by standard cosmology dark matter bounds and suggest that loosening the dark matter constraints is necessary in order to avoid a too strong (cosmological) model dependence in the limits that are obtained for these models. We also discuss briefly the implications for phenomenology and in particular at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 37 pages, 20 figures, 1 tabl

Antideuterons as a Signature of Supersymmetric Dark Matter

Once the energy spectrum of the secondary component is well understood, measurements of the antiproton cosmic-ray flux at the Earth will be a powerful way to indirectly probe for the existence of supersymmetric relics in the galactic halo. Unfortunately, it is still spoilt by considerable theoretical uncertainties. As shown in this work, searches for low-energy antideuterons appear in the mean time as a plausible alternative, worth being explored. Above a few GeV/n, a dozen spallation antideuterons should be collected by the future AMS experiment on board ISSA. For energies less than about 3 GeV/n, the antideuteron spallation component becomes negligible and may be supplanted by a potential supersymmetric signal. If a few low-energy antideuterons are discovered, this should be seriously taken as a clue for the existence of massive neutralinos in the Milky Way.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

On the Importance of Electroweak Corrections for Majorana Dark Matter Indirect Detection

Recent analyses have shown that the inclusion of electroweak corrections can alter significantly the energy spectra of Standard Model particles originated from dark matter annihilations. We investigate the important situation where the radiation of electroweak gauge bosons has a substantial influence: a Majorana dark matter particle annihilating into two light fermions. This process is in p-wave and hence suppressed by the small value of the relative velocity of the annihilating particles. The inclusion of electroweak radiation eludes this suppression and opens up a potentially sizeable s-wave contribution to the annihilation cross section. We study this effect in detail and explore its impact on the fluxes of stable particles resulting from the dark matter annihilations, which are relevant for dark matter indirect searches. We also discuss the effective field theory approach, pointing out that the opening of the s-wave is missed at the level of dimension-six operators and only encoded by higher orders.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. Minor corrections to match version published in JCA

Status of cosmic-ray antideuteron searches

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).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, ICRC 2015 proceeding

On hypercharge flux and exotics in F-theory GUTs

We study SU(5) Grand Unified Theories within a local framework in F-theory with multiple extra U(1) symmetries arising from a small monodromy group. The use of hypercharge flux for doublet-triplet splitting implies massless exotics in the spectrum that are protected from obtaining a mass by the U(1) symmetries. We find that lifting the exotics by giving vacuum expectation values to some GUT singlets spontaneously breaks all the U(1) symmetries which implies that proton decay operators are induced. If we impose an additional R-parity symmetry by hand we find all the exotics can be lifted while proton decay operators are still forbidden. These models can retain the gauge coupling unification accuracy of the MSSM at 1-loop. For models where the generations are distributed across multiple curves we also present a motivation for the quark-lepton mass splittings at the GUT scale based on a Froggatt-Nielsen approach to flavour.Comment: 38 pages; v2: emphasised possibility of avoiding exotics in models without a global E8 structure, added ref, journal versio

Low energy antideuterons: shedding light on dark matter

Low energy antideuterons suffer a very low secondary and tertiary astrophysical background, while they can be abundantly synthesized in dark matter pair annihilations, therefore providing a privileged indirect dark matter detection technique. The recent publication of the first upper limit on the low energy antideuteron flux by the BESS collaboration, a new evaluation of the standard astrophysical background, and remarkable progresses in the development of a dedicated experiment, GAPS, motivate a new and accurate analysis of the antideuteron flux expected in particle dark matter models. To this extent, we consider here supersymmetric, universal extra-dimensions (UED) Kaluza-Klein and warped extra-dimensional dark matter models, and assess both the prospects for antideuteron detection as well as the various related sources of uncertainties. The GAPS experiment, even in a preliminary balloon-borne setup, will explore many supersymmetric configurations, and, eventually, in its final space-borne configuration, will be sensitive to primary antideuterons over the whole cosmologically allowed UED parameter space, providing a search technique which is highly complementary with other direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures; version to appear in JCA