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

Recent observations show that the cosmic ray nuclei spectra start to harden above 100 GeV, in contradiction with the conventional steady-state cosmic ray model. We had suggested that this anomaly is due to the propagation effect of cosmic rays released from local young cosmic ray sources, the total flux of the cosmic ray should be computed with the myriad model, where contribution from sources in local catalog is added to the background. However, while the hardening could be elegantly explained in this model, the model parameters obtained from the fit skew toward a region with fast diffusion and low supernova rate in the Galaxy, in tension with other observations. In this paper, we further explore this model in order to set up a concordant picture. Two possible improvements related to the cosmic ray sources have been considered. Firstly, instead of the usual axisymmetric disk model, we considered a spiral model of source distribution. Secondly, for the nearby and young sources which are paramount to the hardening, we allow for an energy-dependent escape time. We find that major improvement comes from the energy-dependent escape time of the local sources, and with both modifications, not only the cosmic ray proton and helium anomalies are solved, but also the parameters attain reasonable range values compatible with other analysis.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in RA

Quintessence and the Relic Density of Neutralinos

The archetypal model for the recently discovered dark energy component of the universe is based on the existence of a scalar field whose dynamical evolution comes down today to a non-vanishing cosmological constant. In the past - before big-bang nucleosynthesis for that matter - that scalar field could have gone through a period of kination during which the universe has expanded at a much higher pace than what is currently postulated in the standard radiation dominated cosmology. I examine here the consequences of such a period of kination on the relic abundance of neutralinos and find that the latter could be much higher - by three orders of magnitude - than what is estimated in the canonical derivation. I shortly discuss the implications of this scenario for the dark matter candidates and their astrophysical signatures. This new version contains a discussion - see section 2 - of the overshooting problem and offers perspectives to reconcile an initial period of violent kination with the existence of a cosmological constant today.Comment: Latex 12 pages, 3 figure

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.Comment: 8 pages, proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter, Rhodes Island, Greece, September 11-16, 200

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.Comment: 17 pages revtex4, 7 figures; minor changes (to match the published version

A fussy revisitation of antiprotons as a tool for Dark Matter searches

Antiprotons are regarded as a powerful probe for Dark Matter (DM) indirect detection and indeed current data from PAMELA have been shown to lead to stringent constraints. However, in order to exploit their constraining/discovery power properly and especially in anticipation of the exquisite accuracy of upcoming data from AMS, great attention must be put into effects (linked to their propagation in the Galaxy) which may be perceived as subleasing but actually prove to be quite relevant. We revisit the computation of the astrophysical background and of the DM antiproton fluxes fully including the effects of: diffusive reacceleration, energy losses including tertiary component and solar modulation (in a force field approximation). We show that their inclusion can somewhat modify the current bounds, even at large DM masses, and that a wrong interpretation of the data may arise if they are not taken into account. The numerical results for the astrophysical background are provided in terms of fit functions; the results for Dark Matter are incorporated in the new release of the PPPC4DMID.Comment: v3: small comments and references added, matches journal versio

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

We show in this letter that estimates of the local emissivity of {\gamma}-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 {\gamma}-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 {\gamma}-ray emissivity -- is no longer a relevant quantity given the latest measurements of the primary cosmic ray proton and helium spectra

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.Comment: 4 pages revtex4, 4 figures. Improved analysis and discussion, added constraints from Fermi data, corrected figures and updated reference