http://risa.stanford.edu/teaching/362/particledarkmatter.pdf

Particle dark matter: Evidence, candidates and constraints

There is almost universal agreement among astronomers that most of the mass in the Universe and most of the mass in the Galactic halo is dark. Many lines of reasoning suggest that the dark matter consists of some new, as yet undiscovered, weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP). There is now a vast experimental effort being surmounted to detect WIMPS in the halo. The most promising techniques involve direct detection in low-background laboratory detectors and indirect detection through observation of energetic neutrinos from annihilation of WIMPs that have accumulated in the Sun and/or the Earth. Of the many WIMP candidates, perhaps the best motivated and certainly the most theoretically developed is the neutralino, the lightest superpartner in many supersymmetric theories. We review the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model and discuss prospects for detection of neutralino dark matter. We review in detail how to calculate the cosmological abundance of the neutralino and the event rates for both direct- and indirect-detection schemes, and we discuss astrophysical and laboratory constraints on supersymmetric models. We isolate and clarify the uncertainties from particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics that enter at each step in the calculation. We briefly review other related dark-matter candidates and detection techniques.

Supersymmetric Dark Matter

We provide ingredients and recipes for computing signals of TeV-scale Dark Matter annihilations and decays in the Galaxy and beyond. For each DM channel, we present the energy spectra of electrons and positrons, antiprotons, antideuterons, gamma rays, neutrinos and antineutrinos e, mu, tau at production, computed by high-statistics simulations. We estimate the Monte Carlo uncertainty by comparing the results yielded by the Pythia and Herwig event generators. We then provide the propagation functions for charged particles in the Galaxy, for several DM distribution profiles and sets of propagation parameters. Propagation of electrons and positrons is performed with an improved semi-analytic method that takes into account position-dependent energy losses in the Milky Way. Using such propagation functions, we compute the energy spectra of electrons and positrons, antiprotons and antideuterons at the location of the Earth. We then present the gamma ray fluxes, both from prompt emission and from Inverse Compton scattering in the galactic halo. Finally, we provide the spectra of extragalactic gamma rays. All results are available in numerical form and ready to be consumed.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2011/03/051/pdf

PPPC 4 DM ID: a poor particle physicist cookbook for dark matter indirect detection

The question of the nature of the dark matter in the Universe remains one of the most outstanding unsolved problems in basic science. One of the best motivated particle physics candidates is the lightest supersymmetric particle, assumed to be the lightest neutralino—a linear combination of the supersymmetric partners of the photon, the Z boson and neutral scalar Higgs particles. Here we describe DarkSUSY, a publicly available advanced numerical package for neutralino dark matter calculations. In DarkSUSY one can compute the neutralino density in the Universe today using precision methods which include resonances, pair production thresholds and coannihilations. Masses and mixings of supersymmetric particles can be computed within DarkSUSY or with the help of external programs such as FeynHiggs, ISASUGRA and SUSPECT. Accelerator bounds can be checked to identify viable dark matter candidates. DarkSUSY also computes a large variety of astrophysical signals from neutralino dark matter, such as direct detection in low-background counting experiments and indirect detection through antiprotons, antideuterons, gamma-rays and positrons from the galactic halo or high-energy neutrinos from the centre of the Earth or of the Sun. Here we describe the physics behind the package. A detailed manual will be provided with the computer package.

/pdf/darksusy-computing-supersymmetric-dark-matter-properties-52bmzgum6l.pdf

DarkSUSY: Computing Supersymmetric Dark Matter Properties Numerically

The spectrum and high-energy neutrino background flux from photomeson production in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is calculated using the recent UV and X-ray observations to define the photon fields and an accretion-disk shock-acceleration model for producing high-energy particles. Collectively, AGN produce the dominant isotropic neutrino background between 10,000 and 10 to the 10th GeV, detectable with current instruments. AGN neutrinos should produce a sphere of stellar disruption which may explain the 'broad-line region' seen in AGN.

High-energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei.

Stable photinos, the photino being the supersymmetry partner of the photon, can explain both the 'missing mass' in galactic halos and the cosmic-ray antiproton spectrum up to the highest energies observed so far. This requires a photino mass around 15 GeV; significantly higher masses are cosmologically disfavored. As a consequence, the observed cosmic-ray antiproton-to-proton ratio is predicted to decrease abruptly just above the measured energy range, at E = m(x). If observed, this striking effect would strongly support the hypothesis that photinos make up the missing matter in the galaxy and also lead to a measurement of the photino mass from cosmic-ray data.

Galactic antiprotons from photinos.

It is suggested that grand unified field theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking in the very early big-bang can lead more naturally to a baryon symmetric cosmology with a domain structure than to a totally baryon asymmetric cosmology. The symmetry is broken in a randomized manner in causally independent domains, favoring neither a baryon nor an antibaryon excess on a universal scale. Arguments in favor of this cosmology and observational tests are discussed.

/pdf/cosmological-baryon-number-domain-structure-from-symmetry-1nkt7ulg8r.pdf

Cosmological baryon-number domain structure from symmetry breaking in grand unified field theories

The physics of the annihilation of photinos is considered as a function of mass in detail, in order to obtain the energy spectra of the cosmic ray antiprotons produced under the assumption that photinos make up the missing mass in the galactic halo. The modulated spectrum is at 1 a.w. with the cosmic ray antiprotons data. A very intriguing fit is obtained to all of the present antiprotons up to 13.4 GeV data for similar to 15 GeV. A cutoff is predicted in the antiprotons spectrum at E = photino mass above which only a small flux from secondary production should remain.

/pdf/galactic-cosmic-ray-antiprotons-and-supersymmetry-2dt58krrek.pdf

F. W. Stecker

Papers

High-energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei.

Galactic antiprotons from photinos.

Cosmological baryon-number domain structure from symmetry breaking in grand unified field theories

Galactic cosmic ray antiprotons and supersymmetry