We show that the energy spectra from dark matter (DM) annihilation into $f^+f^-γ$ (where $f$ is a light fermion) via chirality preserving interactions are identical in 3 scenarios: (a) DM is a Majorana fermion and the particle exchanged is a scalar, (b) DM is a Majorana fermion and the particle exchanged is a vector and (c) DM is a scalar and the particle exchanged is a fermion. For cases (a) and (c), we also calculate the differential cross section to $\ell^+f^-V$, where $V=W,Z,γ$, and $\ell$ is a light fermion that may or not be the same as $f$. The form of the cross section depends on whether the DM is a Majorana fermion or a scalar but in both cases its form is independent of $V$.
The nonrelativistic annihilation of Majorana dark matter in the Sun to a pair of light fermions is chirality-suppressed. Annihilation to 3-body final states $\ell^+f^-V$, where $V=W,Z,γ$, and $\ell$ and $f$ are light fermions (that may be the same), becomes dominant since bremsstrahlung relaxes the chirality suppression. We evaluate the neutrino spectra at the source, including spin and helicity dependent effects, and assess the detectability of each significant bremsstrahlung channel at IceCube/DeepCore. We also show how to combine the sensitivities to the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross…
We consider scenarios in which the annihilation of self-conjugate spin-1 dark matter to a Standard Model fermion-antifermion final state is chirality suppressed, but where this suppression can be lifted by the emission of an additional photon via internal bremsstrahlung. We find that this scenario can only arise if the initial dark matter state is polarized, which can occur in the context of self-interacting dark matter. In particular, this is possible if the dark matter pair forms a bound state that decays to its ground state before the constituents annihilate. We show that the shape of the r…
We examine observational signatures of dark matter annihilation in the Milky Way arising from electroweak bremsstrahlung contributions to the annihilation cross section. It has been known for some time that photon bremsstrahlung may significantly boost DM annihilation yields. Recently, we have shown that electroweak bremsstrahlung of W and Z gauge bosons can be the dominant annihilation channel in some popular models with helicity-suppressed 2 --> 2 annihilation. W/Z-bremsstrahlung is particularly interesting because the gauge bosons produced via annihilation subsequently decay to produce larg…
We revisit the calculation of electroweak bremsstrahlung contributions to dark matter annihilation. Dark matter annihilation to leptons is necessarily accompanied by electroweak radiative corrections, in which a $W$ or $Z$ boson is also radiated. Significantly, while many dark matter models feature a helicity suppressed annihilation rate to fermions, bremsstrahlung process can remove this helicity suppression such that the branching ratios Br($\ell νW $), Br($\ell^+\ell^-Z$), and Br($\barννZ$) dominate over Br($\ell^+\ell^-$) and Br($\barνν$). We find this is most significant in the limit wher…
Bremsstrahlung of $W$ and $Z$ gauge bosons, or photons, can be an important dark matter annihilation channel. In many popular models in which the annihilation to a pair of light fermions is helicity suppressed, these bremsstrahlung processes can lift the suppression and thus become the dominant annihilation channels. The resulting dark matter annihilation products contain a large, energetic, neutrino component. We consider solar WIMP annihilation in the case where electroweak bremsstrahlung dominates, and calculate the resulting neutrino spectra. The flux consists of primary neutrinos produced…
We discuss techniques for obtaining a numerically-stable evaluation of the fully differential cross section for the virtual photon correction to single hard photon bremsstrahlung in two different computational schemes. We also compare the role of finite mass corrections in these schemes.
Indirect searches for the cosmological dark matter have become ever more competitive during the past years. Here, we report the first full calculation of leading electroweak corrections to the annihilation rate of supersymmetric neutralino dark matter. We find that these corrections can be huge, partially due to contributions that have been overlooked so far. Our results imply a significantly enhanced discovery potential of this well motivated dark matter candidate with current and upcoming cosmic ray experiments, in particular for gamma rays and models with somewhat small annihilation rates a…
Dark matter annihilation to leptons, $χχ\rightarrow l \bar{l}$, is necessarily accompanied by electroweak radiative corrections, in which a W or Z boson is radiated from a final state particle. Given that the W and Z gauge bosons decay dominantly via hadronic channels, it is thus impossible to produce final state leptons without accompanying protons, antiprotons, and gamma rays. Significantly, while many dark matter models feature a helicity suppressed annihilation rate to fermions, radiating a massive gauge boson from a final state fermion removes this helicity suppression, such that the bran…
For Majorana dark matter, gauge boson bremsstrahlung plays an important role in enhancing an otherwise helicity-suppressed s-wave annihilation cross-section. This is well known for processes involving a radiated photon or gluon together with a Standard Model fermion-antifermion pair, and the case of massive electroweak gauge bosons has also recently been studied. Here we show that internal Higgs bremsstrahlung also lifts helicity suppression and could be the dominant contribution to the annihilation rate in the late Universe for dark matter masses below ~1 TeV. Using a toy model of leptophilic…
We investigate the effects of electroweak bremsstrahlung on bino-like neutralino dark matter pair annihilations in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). We calculate the nonrelativistic pair annihilation cross sections via $W$-strahlung from leptonic final states, $χχ$ $\to$ $W\ell\barν$, and compare them with the contributions of the relevant two-body final states. We explore the case that sleptons lie below the TeV scale, while squarks are extremely heavy. It is found that the electroweak bremsstrahlung can give a dominant contribution to the cross section for some parameter regi…
We present comparisons of the fully differential exact virtual correction to the important single hard bremsstrahlung process in e+e- annihilation at high energies, which is essential for precision studies of the Standard Model from 1 GeV to 1 TeV, as calculated by two completely independent methods and groups. We show that the two sets of results are in excellent agreement. Phenomenological implications are discussed.
If the Dark Matter is the neutral Majorana component of a multiplet which is charged under the electroweak interactions of the Standard Model, its main annihilation channel is into W+W-, while the annihilation into light fermions is helicity suppressed. As pointed out recently, the radiation of gauge bosons from the initial state of the annihilation lifts the suppression and opens up an s-wave contribution to the cross section. We perform the full tree-level calculation of Dark Matter annihilations, including electroweak bremsstrahlung, in the context of an explicit model corresponding to the …
We have compared the virtual corrections to electron-positron annihilation to fermion pairs with single hard bremsstrahlung as calculated by S. Jadach, M. Melles, B.F.L. Ward and S.A. Yost to several other expressions. The most recent of these comparisons is to the leptonic tensor calculated by J.H. Kuhn and G. Rodrigo for radiative return. Agreement is found to within $10^{-5}$ or better, as a fraction of the Born cross section.
We present the complete electroweak one-loop corrections to top-pair production at a linear e^+e^- collider in the continuum region. Besides weak and photonic virtual corrections, real hard bremsstrahlung with simple realistic kinematical cuts is included. For the bremsstrahlung we advocate a semi-analytical approach with a high numerical accuracy. The virtual corrections are parametrized through six independent form factors, suitable for Monte-Carlo implementation. Alternatively, our numerical package topfit, a stand-alone code, can be utilized for the calculation of both differential and int…
If the dark matter particle is a Majorana fermion, annihilations into two fermions and one gauge boson could have, for some choices of the parameters of the model, a non-negligible cross-section. Using a toy model of leptophilic dark matter, we calculate the constraints on the annihilation cross-section into two electrons and one weak gauge boson from the PAMELA measurements of the cosmic antiproton-to-proton flux ratio. Furthermore, we calculate the maximal astrophysical boost factor allowed in the Milky Way under the assumption that the leptophilic dark matter particle is the dominant compon…
Many dark matter interaction types lead to annihilation processes which suffer from p-wave suppression or helicity suppression, rendering them subdominant to unsuppressed s-wave processes. We demonstrate that the natural inclusion of dark initial state radiation can open an unsuppressed s-wave annihilation channel, and thus provide the dominant dark matter annihilation process for particular interaction types. We illustrate this effect with the bremsstrahlung of a dark spin-0 or dark spin-1 particle from fermionic dark matter, $\overlineχχ\rightarrow \overline{f}fϕ$ or $\overline{f}fZ'$. The d…
A conservative upper bound on the total dark matter (DM) annihilation rate can be obtained by constraining the appearance rate of the annihilation products which are hardest to detect. The production of neutrinos, via the process $χχ\to \barνν$, has thus been used to set a strong general bound on the dark matter annihilation rate. However, Standard Model radiative corrections to this process will inevitably produce photons which may be easier to detect. We present an explicit calculation of the branching ratios for the electroweak bremsstrahlung processes $χχ\to \barννZ$ and $χχ\to \barνe W$. …
A sharp and spatially extended peak in an astrophysical gamma ray spectrum would provide very strong evidence for the existence of dark matter (DM), given that there are no known astrophysical processes that could mimic such a signal. From the particle physics perspective, perhaps the simplest explanation for a gamma ray peak is internal bremsstrahlung in DM annihilation through a charged t-channel mediator eta close in mass to the DM particle chi. Since DM annihilation to quarks is already tightly constrained in this scenario, we focus here on the leptophilic case. We compute the electromagne…
We have compared the virtual corrections to single hard bremsstrahlung as calculated by S. Jadach, M. Melles, B.F.L. Ward and S.A. Yost to several other expressions. The most recent of these comparisons is to the leptonic tensor calculated by J.H. Kuhn and G. Rodrigo for radiative return. Agreement is found to within a part in 10^5 or better, as a fraction of the Born cross section, for most of the range of photon energies. The massless limits have been shown to agree analytically to NLL order.
We compare fully differential exact results for the virtual photon correction to single hard photon bremsstrahlung obtained using independent calculations, both for electron-positron annihilation at high-energy colliders and for radiative return applications. The results are compared using Monte Carlo evaluations of the matrix elements as well as by direct analytical evaluation of certain critical limits. Special attention is given to the issues of numerical stability and the treatment of finite-mass corrections. It is found that agreement on the order of 10^{-5} or better is obtained over mos…
We compute the single bremsstrahlung emission associated with the pair annihilation of spin-0 particles into electrons and positrons, via the t-channel exchange of a heavy fermion. We compare our result with the work of Beacom et al. . Unlike what is stated in the literature, we show that the Bremsstrahlung cross section is not necessarily given by the tree-level annihilation cross section (for a generalized kinematics) times a factor related to the emission of a soft photon. Such a factorization appears only in the soft photon limit or in the approximation where the masses of the particles in…
We re-analyze published proton beam dump data taken at the U70 accelerator at IHEP Serpukhov with the $ν$-calorimeter I experiment in 1989 to set mass-coupling limits for dark gauge forces. The corresponding data have been used for axion and light Higgs particle searches in Refs. \cite{Blumlein:1990ay,Blumlein:1991xh} before. More recently, limits on dark gauge forces have been derived from this data set, considering a dark photon production from $π^0$-decay \cite{Blumlein:2011mv}. Here we determine extended mass and coupling exclusion bounds for dark gauge bosons ranging to masses $m_{γ'}$ of…
Gamma ray spectral features are of interest for indirect searches of dark matter (DM). Following Barger et al, we consider 3 simple scenarios of DM that annihilates into Standard Model (SM) fermion pairs. Scenario 1 is a Majorana DM candidate coupled to a charged scalar, scenario 2 is a Majorana DM coupled to a charged gauge boson and scenario 3 is a real scalar DM coupled a charged vector-like fermion. As shown by Barger et al, these 3 scenarios share precisely the same internal Bremsstrahlung spectral signature into gamma rays. Their phenomenology is however distinct. In particular for annih…
We investigate the prospects to observe a high energy neutrino signal from dark matter annihilations in the Sun in scenarios where the dark matter is a Majorana fermion that couples to a quark and a colored scalar via a Yukawa coupling. In this minimal scenario, the dark matter capture and annihilation in the Sun can be studied in a single framework. We find that, for small and moderate mass splitting between the dark matter and the colored scalar, the two-to-three annihilation $q \bar q g$ plays a central role in the calculation of the number of captured dark matter particles. On the other ha…
A technique for the simulation of dark bremsstrahlung for electrons and muons in GEANT4 is presented. The total cross section is calculated using the Weizsäcker-Williams approximation and the outgoing kinematics are produced by scaling events produced in MadGraph/MadEvent to lower incident lepton energies, allowing the simulation to account for thick targets and lepton sources without fixed energies. Compared with dedicated samples produced at an arbitrary particle energy, typical precision of better than 5% is achieved.
We discuss the often-neglected role of bremsstrahlung processes on the interstellar gas in computing indirect signatures of Dark Matter (DM) annihilation in the Galaxy, particularly for light DM candidates in the phenomenologically interesting O(10) GeV mass range. Especially from directions close to the Galactic Plane, the expected gamma-ray spectrum is altered via two effects: directly, by the photons emitted in the bremsstrahlung process on the interstellar gas by energetic electrons which are among the DM annihilation byproducts; indirectly, by the modification of the same electron spectru…
Arguably, the most popular candidate for Dark Matter (DM) is a massive, stable, Majorana fermion. However, annihilation of Majorana DM to two fermions often features a helicity-suppressed s-wave rate. Radiating a gauge boson via electroweak (EW) and electromagnetic (EM) bremsstrahlung removes this s-wave suppression. The main purpose of this talk is to explain in some detail why the branching ratio to a fermion pair is likely suppressed while the decay to the pair plus a W/Z is not. In doing so, we investigate the general conditions for s-wave suppression and un-suppression using Fierz transfo…
It is well known that the annihilation of Majorana dark matter into fermions is helicity suppressed. Here, we point out that the underlying mechanism is a subtle combination of two distinct effects, and we present a comprehensive analysis of how the suppression can be partially or fully lifted by the internal bremsstrahlung of an additional boson in the final state. As a concrete illustration, we compute analytically the full amplitudes and annihilation rates of supersymmetric neutralinos to final states that contain any combination of two standard model fermions, plus one electroweak gauge bo…
We present the exact O(alpha) correction to the process e+ e- -> f f-bar + gamma, f neq e, for ISR oplus FSR at and beyond LEP2 energies. We give explicit formulas for the completely differential cross section. As an important application, we compute the size of the respective sub-leading corrections of O(alpha L) to the f f-bar cross section, where L is the respective big logarithm in the renormalization group sense so that it is identifiable as L = ln |s|/m_e^2 when s is the squared e+e- cms energy. Comparisons are made with the available literature. We show explicitly that our results have …
Gamma-rays induced by annihilation or decay of dark matter can be its smoking gun signature. In particular, gamma-rays generated by internal bremsstrahlung of Majorana and real scalar dark matter is promising since it can be a leading emission of sharp gamma-rays. However in the case of Majorana dark matter, its cross section for internal bremsstrahlung cannot be large enough to be observed by future gamma-ray experiments if the observed relic density is assumed to be thermally produced. In this paper, we introduce some degenerate particles with Majorana dark matter, and show they lead enhance…
A commonly encountered obstacle in indirect searches for galactic dark matter is how to disentangle possible signals from astrophysical backgrounds. Given that such signals are most likely subdominant, the search for pronounced spectral features plays a key role for indirect detection experiments; monochromatic gamma-ray lines or similar features related to internal bremsstrahlung, in particular, provide smoking gun signatures. We perform a dedicated search for the latter in the data taken by the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope during its first 43 months. To this end, we use a new adaptive pro…
We study the scenario of fermionic dark matter that annihilates to standard model fermions through an s-channel axial vector mediator. We point out that the well-known chirality suppression of the annihilation cross section can be alleviated by s-channel internal Higgsstrahlung. The shapes of the cosmic ray spectra are identical to that of t-channel internal Higgsstrahlung in the limit of a heavy mediating particle. Unlike the general case of t-channel bremsstrahlung, s-channel Higgsstrahlung can be the dominant annihilation process even for Dirac dark matter. Since the s-channel mediator can …
We discuss the dark gauge boson emission from neutron stars via nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung. Through the rigorous treatment of the effective field theory prescription and the thermal effect, we derive the relevant couplings of dark gauge bosons to hadrons in medium. As a specific example, the $U(1)_{\rm B-L}$ gauge boson scenario is chosen to investigate dark gauge boson emissivities during supernovae and cooling of young neutron stars. From the stellar cooling argument, we obtain the constraints on the $\rm B-L$ gauge coupling for given gauge boson masses in two observations: the duration …
Dark matter can be boosted by various mechanisms, which may produce characteristic signals that are different from those of canonical dark matter. We show that the semi-annihilation $χχ\to\barχν$ produces signals that are distinctive from those of other semi-annihilation and standard dark matter annihilation processes. Because the boosted dark matter produced by the semi-annihilation process is regarded as a high-energy neutrino, the total flux of the dark matter and the accompanying neutrino produce double peaks in the energy close to the dark matter mass. We show that it will be possible to …
We calculate the rate of production of hypothetical light vector bosons (LVBs) from nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung reactions in the soft radiation limit directly in terms of the measured nucleon-nucleon elastic cross sections. We use these results and the observation of neutrinos from supernova SN1987a to deduce constraints on the couplings of vector bosons with masses $\lesssim 200$ MeV to either electric charge (dark photons) or to baryon number. We establish for the first time strong constraints on LVB that couple only to baryon number, and revise earlier constraints on the dark photon. For…
Dark matter may only interact with the visible sector efficiently at energy scales above the inflaton mass, such as the Planck scale or the grand unification scale. In such a scenario, the dark matter is mainly produced out of equilibrium during the period of reheating, often referred to as UV freeze-in. We evaluate the abundance of the dark matter generated from bremsstrahlung off the inflaton decay products assuming no direct coupling between the inflaton and the dark matter. This process generally dominates the production of dark matter for low reheating temperatures where the production th…
Excesses on positron and electron fluxes measured by ATIC, and the PAMELA and Fermi--LAT telescopes can be explained by dark matter annihilation in our Galaxy. However, this requires large boosts on the dark matter annihilation rate. There are many possible enhancement mechanisms, such as the Sommerfeld effect or the existence of dark matter clumps in our halo. If enhancements on the dark matter annihilation cross section are taking place, the dark matter annihilation in the core of the Earth should also be enhanced. Here we use recent results from the IceCube 40-string configuration to probe …
The search for dark matter weakly interacting massive particles with noble liquids has probed masses down and below a GeV/c^2. The ultimate limit is represented by the experimental threshold on the energy transfer to the nuclear recoil. Currently, the experimental sensitivity has reached a threshold equivalent to a few ionization electrons. In these conditions, the contribution of a Bremsstrahlung photon or a so-called Migdal electron due to the sudden acceleration of a nucleus after a collision might be sizable. In the present work, we use a Bayesian approach to study how these effects can be…
Experiments using proton beams at high luminosity colliders and fixed target facilities provide impressive sensitivity to new light weakly coupled degrees of freedom. With these experiments in mind, we revisit the production of dark vectors and scalars via proton bremsstrahlung, making use of a model that describes the underlying nucleon scattering cross-section in the forward direction due to pomeron exchange. We compare the resulting distributions and rates with those obtained via variants of the Fermi-Weizsacker-Williams approximation, and provide production rate distributions for a range o…
One method to search for particle dark matter is to hunt down its annihilation products. In the Solar System, three potential types of signals of annihilation have been identified: neutrinos and gamma-rays from the Sun, and neutrinos from the Earth. Each of these signals depends sensitively on the orbital evolution of dark matter once it becomes bound to the Solar System. I will review progress on characterizing these signals based on recent improvements in the determination of the properties of the bound dark matter population.
We consider a simplified model in which Majorana fermion dark matter annihilates to charged fermions through exchange of charged mediators. We consider the gamma-ray signals arising from the processes $XX \rightarrow \bar f f γ$, $γγ$, and $γZ$ in the most general case, including non-trivial fermion mass and non-trivial left-right mixing and $CP$-violating phase for the charged mediators. In particular, we find the most general spectrum for internal bremsstrahlung, which interpolates between the regimes dominated by virtual internal bremsstrahlung and by final state radiation. We also examine …
Interpretations of indirect searches for dark matter (DM) require theoretical predictions for the annihilation or decay rates of DM into stable particles of the standard model. These predictions include usually only final states accessible as lowest order tree-level processes, with electromagnetic bremsstrahlung and the loop-suppressed two gamma-ray line as exceptions. We show that this restriction may lead to severely biased results for DM tailored to produce only leptons in final states and with mass in the TeV range. For such models, unavoidable electroweak bremsstrahlung of Z and W-bosons …
We present a detailed study of the effect of internal bremsstrahlung photons in the context of the minimal supersymmetric standard models and their impact on gamma-ray dark matter annihilation searches. We find that although this effect has to be included for the correct evaluation of fluxes of high energy photons from neutralino annihilation, its contribution is relevant only in models and at energies where the lines contribution is dominant over the secondary photons. Therefore, we find that the most optimistic supersymmetric scenarios for dark matter detection do not change significantly wh…
Pion bremsstrahlung in the splitting function formalism and the dark photon production
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院核物理研究所）；Landau Phystech School of Physics and Research, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology（莫斯科物理科学与技术大学朗道物理与技术学院）；Institute of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University（莫斯科国立大学理论与数学物理研究所）
Dark matter direct detection experiments have limited sensitivity to light dark matter (below a few GeV), due to the challenges of lowering energy thresholds for the detection of nuclear recoil to below $\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{keV})$. While impressive progress has been made on this front, light dark matter remains the least constrained region of dark-matter parameter space. It has been shown that both ionization and excitation due to the Migdal effect and coherently-emitted photon bremsstrahlung from the recoiling atom can provide observable channels for light dark matter that would otherwise hav…
There has been interest recently on particle physics models that may give rise to sharp gamma ray spectral features from dark matter annihilation. Because dark matter is supposed to be electrically neutral, it is challenging to build weakly interacting massive particle models that may accommodate both a large cross section into gamma rays at, say, the Galactic center, and the right dark matter abundance. In this work, we consider the gamma ray signatures of a class of scalar dark matter models that interact with Standard Model dominantly through heavy vector-like fermions (the vector-like port…
Although proposed long ago, the search for internal bremsstrahlung signatures has only recently been made possible by the excellent energy resolution of ground-based and satellite-borne gamma-ray instruments. Here, we investigate thoroughly the current status of internal bremsstrahlung searches in light of the results of direct dark matter searches and in the framework of a minimal mass-degenerate scenario consisting of a Majorana dark matter particle that couples to a fermion and a scalar via a Yukawa coupling. The upper limits on the annihilation cross section set by Fermi-LAT and H.E.S.S. e…
We present a first calculation of the rate for plasmon production in semiconductors from nuclei recoiling against dark matter. The process is analogous to bremsstrahlung of transverse photon modes, but with a longitudinal plasmon mode emitted instead. For dark matter in the 10 MeV - 1 GeV mass range, we find that the plasmon bremsstrahlung rate is 4-5 orders of magnitude smaller than that for elastic scattering, but 4-5 orders of magnitude larger than the transverse bremsstrahlung rate. Because the plasmon can decay into electronic excitations and has characteristic energy given by the plasma …
A gamma-ray excess from the galactic center consistent with line emission around 130 GeV was recently found in the Fermi-LAT data. Although the Fermi-LAT Collaboration has not confirmed its significance, such a signal would be a clear signature of Dark Matter annihilation. Until now, there have been many attempts to explain the excess by Dark Matter. However these efforts tend to give too-small cross sections into photons if consistency with the correct thermal relic density of Dark Matter is required. In this letter, we consider a simple Yukawa interaction that can be compatible with both asp…
Hints in the Fermi data for a 130 GeV gamma line from the galactic center have ignited interest in potential gamma line signatures of dark matter. Explanations of this line based on dark matter annihilation face a parametric tension since they often rely on large enhancements of loop-suppressed cross sections. In this paper, we pursue an alternative possibility that dark matter gamma lines could arise from "semi-annihilation" among multiple dark sector states. The semi-annihilation reaction with a single final state photon is typically enhanced relative to ordinary annihilation into photon pai…
