Cosmic Ray-Dark Matter Scattering: a New Signature of (Asymmetric) Dark Matter in the Gamma Ray Sky

Abstract

We consider the process of scattering of Galactic cosmic-ray electrons and protons off of dark matter with the radiation of a final-state photon. This process provides a novel way to search for Galactic dark matter with gamma rays. We argue that for a generic weakly interacting massive particle, barring effects such as co-annihilation or a velocity-dependent cross section, the gamma-ray emission from cosmic-ray scattering off of dark matter is typically smaller than that from dark matter pair-annihilation. However, if dark matter particles cannot pair-annihilate, as is the case for example in asymmetric dark matter scenarios, cosmic-ray scattering with final state photon emission provides a unique window to detect a signal from dark matter with gamma rays. We estimate the expected flux level and its spectral features for a generic supersymmetric setup, and we also discuss dipolar and luminous dark matter. We show that in some cases the gamma-ray emission might be large enough to be detectable with the Fermi Large Area Telescope.

16 pages, 3 figures; v2: references and text added, to appear in JCAP

References in corpus (15)

• PPPC 4 DM ID: A Poor Particle Physicist Cookbook for Dark Matter Indirect Detection
• Asymmetric Dark Matter
• The Spectrum of the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Emission Derived From First-Year Fermi Large Area Telescope Data
• Fermi LAT observations of cosmic-ray electrons from 7 GeV to 1 TeV
• Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation in Clusters of Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Darkogenesis
• Fitting the Gamma-Ray Spectrum from Dark Matter with DMFIT: GLAST and the Galactic Center Region
• Constraints on Decaying Dark Matter from Fermi Observations of Nearby Galaxies and Clusters
• The Role of Antimatter Searches in the Hunt for Supersymmetric Dark Matter
• Gamma Rays from Clusters and Groups of Galaxies: Cosmic Rays versus Dark Matter
• Extragalactic Inverse Compton Light from Dark Matter Annihilation and the Pamela Positron Excess
• Luminous Dark Matter
• Probing Dark Matter with AGN Jets
• Charge Asymmetric Cosmic Ray Signals From Dark Matter Decay
• Cosmic ray knee and new physics at the TeV scale

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Asymmetric Dark Matter: Theories, Signatures, and Constraints
• Regenerating a Symmetry in Asymmetric Dark Matter
• Cosmic Coincidence and Asymmetric Dark Matter in a Stueckelberg Extension
• Gamma-ray Lines in the Fermi Data: is it a Bubble?
• New physics of strong interaction and Dark Universe
• Baryogenesis via Leptogenesis from Asymmetric Dark Matter and radiatively generated Neutrino mass
• Signatures of leptophilic t-channel dark matter from active galactic nuclei
• When Dark Matter interacts with Cosmic Rays or Interstellar Matter: A Morphological Study
• Enhanced Gamma Ray Signals in Cosmic Proton-Wimp Collisions Due to Hadronization
• Phenomenology in supersymmetric neutrinophilic Higgs model with sneutrino dark matter
• Optimal observing strategies for velocity-suppressed dark matter annihilation