Gamma-ray spectrum from gravitino dark matter decay

Gravitinos are very promising candidates for the cold dark matter of the Universe. Interestingly, to achieve a sufficiently long gravitino lifetime, R parity conservation is not required, thus preventing any dangerous cosmological influence of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle. When R parity is violated, gravitinos decay into photons and other particles with a lifetime much longer than the age of the Universe, producing a diffuse gamma-ray flux with a characteristic spectrum that could be measured in future experiments, such as GLAST or AMS-02. In this Letter we compute the energy spectrum of photons from gravitino decay and discuss its main qualitative features.     

Cosmic dark matter and Dirac gauge function

It is suggested that the dark matter of the universe is due to the presence of a scalar field described by the gauge function introduced by Dirac in his modification of the Weyl geometry. The behavior of such dark matter is investigated.     

Searching for dark matter particles using Compton scattering

The dark matter puzzle is one of the most important fundamental physics questions in the 21st century.There is no doubt that solving the puzzle will be a new milestone for human beings in achieving a deeper understanding of nature.Herein,we propose the use of the Shanghai laser electron gamma source(SLEGS) to search for dark matter candidate particles,including dark pseudo scalar particles,dark scalar particles,and dark photons.Our simulations indicate that,with some upgrading,electron facilities such as SLEGS could be competitive platforms in the search for light dark matter particles with a mass below tens of keV.     

SuperWIMP dark matter scenario in light of WMAP

The heavy gravitino in the minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) models is likely to be the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). Produced from the late decays of the metastable weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) such as the lightest neutralinos, the stable gravitinos can be plausible candidates for the cold dark matter in the universe. Such gravitino dark matter can naturally evade the current detection experiments due to its superweak couplings. However, this scenario must be subjected to the constraints from the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions for light element abundances as well as the Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) data for the relic density. Assuming the popular case in which the lightest neutralino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP), we find that requiring BBN predictions for light element abundances to agree with the WMAP data can impose upper and lower mass bounds on both the gravitino LSP and the neutralino NLSP. A scan over the mSUGRA parameter space, subjected to the BBN constraints, the WMAP data and the bounds, shows that the low ( ) region as well as the region accessible at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be severely constrained. Such stringent constraints on the parameter space might be instructive for testing this scenario in future collider experiments.Received: 17 August 2004, Revised: 9 September 2004, Published online: 3 November 2004     

Neutralino dark matter in light Higgs boson scenario

Phenomenology of neutralino dark matter in the minimal supersymmetric model is discussed for a scenario where the lightest Higgs boson mass is lighter than 114.4 GeV$114.4\text{GeV}$. We show that the scenario is consistent not only with many collider experiments but also with the observed relic abundance of dark matter. The allowed region may be probed by experiments of Bs→μ⁺μ⁻$B_s\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ in near future. The scenario predicts a large scattering cross section between the dark matter and ordinary matter and thus it may be tested in present direct detection experiments of dark matter.     

Gamma-ray Constraint on galactic positron production by MeV dark matter

The Galactic positrons, as observed by their annihilation gamma-ray line at 0.511 MeV, are difficult to account for with astrophysical sources. It has been proposed that they are produced instead by dark matter annihilation or decay in the inner Galactic halo. To avoid other constraints, these processes are required to occur "invisibly," such that the eventual positron annihilation is the only detectable signal. However, electromagnetic radiative corrections to these processes inevitably produce real gamma rays ("internal bremsstrahlung"); this emission violates COMPTEL and EGRET constraints unless the dark matter mass is less than about 20 MeV.     

Cosmic γ-rays from dark matter and antimatter annihilation

In this paper, we present details of the physics of cosmic γ-ray production by the annihilation of dark matter particles and cosmological antimatter. For the latter process, considerations of γ-ray absorption and scattering at high redshifts is important and we review the physics of these processes also. Cosmic γ-ray spectra are calculated and presented and compared with present observational data on cosmic γ-ray fluxes at high galactic latitudes. A comparison with the γ-ray flux from cosmic-ray interactions is made and the observability of annihilation γ-rays is considered.     

Sneutrino dark matter in gauged inverse seesaw models for neutrinos

Extending the minimal supersymmetric standard model to explain small neutrino masses via the inverse seesaw mechanism can lead to a new light supersymmetric scalar partner which can play the role of inelastic dark matter (IDM). It is a linear combination of the superpartners of the neutral fermions in the theory (the light left-handed neutrino and two heavy standard model singlet neutrinos) which can be very light with mass in ~5-20 GeV range, as suggested by some current direct detection experiments. The IDM in this class of models has keV-scale mass splitting, which is intimately connected to the small Majorana masses of neutrinos. We predict the differential scattering rate and annual modulation of the IDM signal which can be testable at future germanium- and xenon-based detectors.     

Minimal supergravity scalar neutrino dark matter and inverse seesaw neutrino masses

We show that within the inverse seesaw mechanism for generating neutrino masses, minimal supergravity naturally provides the scalar neutrino as the lightest superparticle. We also demonstrate that such schemes naturally reconcile the small neutrino masses with the correct relic scalar neutrino dark matter abundance and accessible direct detection rates in nuclear recoil experiments. This way, inverse seesaw minimal supergravity offers a common solution to the generation of the neutrino mass and to the origin of dark matter.     

Enhancement of dark matter relic density from late time dark matter conversions

We demonstrate that if the dark matter (DM) in the Universe contains multiple components, the possible interactions between the DM components may convert the heavier DM components into lighter ones. It is then possible that the lightest DM component with an annihilation cross section significantly larger than that of the typical weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) may lead to a relic density in agreement with cosmological observations, due to an enhancement of number density from the DM conversion process at late time after the thermal decoupling. This may provide an alternative source of boost factor relevant to the positron and electron excesses reported by the recent DM indirect search experiments.