Cosmic Ray Antiprotons at High Energies

Abstract

Cosmic ray antiprotons provide a powerful tool to probe dark matter annihilations in our galaxy. The sensitivity of this important channel is, however, diluted by sizable uncertainties in the secondary antiproton background. In this work, we improve the calculation of secondary antiproton production with a particular focus on the high energy regime. We employ the most recent collider data and identify a substantial increase of antiproton cross sections with energy. This increase is driven by the violation of Feynman scaling as well as by an enhanced strange hyperon production. The updated antiproton production cross sections are made publicly available for independent use in cosmic ray studies. In addition, we provide the correlation matrix of cross section uncertainties for the AMS-02 experiment. At high energies, the new cross sections improve the compatibility of the AMS-02 data with a pure secondary origin of antiprotons in cosmic rays.

26 pages, 9 figures. Ancillary files: antiproton cross section tables, cross section uncertainties of the antiproton flux, correlation matrix of cross section uncertainties for AMS-02

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• Scrutinizing the evidence for dark matter in cosmic-ray antiprotons
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• Large-scale Simulations of Antihelium Production in Cosmic-ray Interactions
• Cosmic-ray antiprotons in the AMS-02 era: A sensitive probe of dark matter
• Robustness of dark matter constraints and interplay with collider searches for New Physics
• AMS-02 antiprotons and dark matter: Trimmed hints and robust bounds
• Direct measurements of cosmic rays and their possible interpretations
• SM antideuteron background to indirect dark matter signals in galactic cosmic rays