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 regions which include slepton coannihilation regions with the observed relic abundance. We also evaluate the neutrino spectra at injection in the Sun. It is shown that energetic neutrinos via weak bremsstrahlung processes can be dominant over contributions of the two-body final states.
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.
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…
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…
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 calculate the one-loop contribution to the bino annihilation rate due to the process $\widetilde B \widetilde B \to Z^*$, which vanishes at tree level.
We study the line gamma ray signature from the Galactic Center originating from Bino-like dark matter pair annihilation, when CP is not conserved. We consider the case that the Bino is nearly degenerate with a sfermion in mass. Although an indirect detection of Bino-like dark matter is difficult in general, the signal of Bino-like dark matter pair annihialtion in this case is enormously enhanced due to the threshold singularity.
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…
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 $χχ\to \barνe W$. …
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…
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 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…
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…
In supersymmetric models with non-universal gaugino masses, it is possible to have opposite-sign SU(2) and U(1) gaugino mass terms. In these models, the gaugino eigenstates experience little mixing so that the lightest SUSY particle remains either pure bino or pure wino. The neutralino relic density can only be brought into accord with the WMAP measured value when bino-wino co-annihilation (BWCA) acts to enhance the dark matter annihilation rate. We map out parameter space regions and mass spectra which are characteristic of the BWCA scenario. Direct and indirect dark matter detection rates ar…
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…
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…
The mSUGRA model predicts the polarization of the tau coming from the stau to bino decay in the co-annihilation region to be +1. This can be exploited to extract this soft tau signal at LHC and also to measure the tiny mass differences between the stau and the bino LSP. Moreover this strategy will be applicable for a wider class of bino LSP models, where the lighter stau has a right component at least of similar size as the left.
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 wheth…
We study phenomenological aspects of the bino-wino co-annihilation scenario in high-scale supersymmetry breaking models. High-scale SUSY breaking scenarios are considered to be promising possibility after the discovery of the Higgs boson with a mass around 126 GeV. In this paper, we discuss the bino lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) accompanied by the at most around 30 GeV heavier wino. With the suitable mass splitting between the bino and the wino, the bino LSP has the correct relic abundance of dark matter. For the smaller mass splitting, the late-time decay of the gravitino can provide…
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 consider regions of the parameter space of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with bino-like neutralino dark matter in which a large fraction of the total dark matter annihilation cross section in the present era arises from annihilation to final states with monoenergetic photons. The region of interest is characterized by light sleptons and heavy squarks. We find that it is possible for the branching fraction to final states with monoenergetic photons to be comparable to that for continuum photons, but in those cases the total cross section will be so small that it is unlikel…
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…
While the bino-dominated lightest neutralino of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is an interesting and widely-studied candidate of the dark matter, the p-wave suppression of its annihilation cross section requires fine-tunings of the MSSM spectra to be consistent with WMAP observations. We propose pseudo-Dirac bino that arises in theories with D-type supersymmetry-breaking as an intriguing alternative candidate of dark matter. The pseudo-Dirac nature of the bino gives a natural mechanism of enhanced co-annihilation because these two states are degenerate in the absence of elect…
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 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…
There is a possible γ-ray signal at 130 GeV coming from the Galactic Center as seen by Fermi-LAT experiment. We give a SUSY dark matter model to explain this γ-ray feature in NMSSM. We show that in NMSSM, one can have a benchmark set in which the γ-ray signal arises from final state γ's in the $χχ\to f \bar f γ$ annihilation of a 130 GeV bino dark matter requiring a boost factor of ~590 to fit the γ-ray signal. In addition, this benchmark set also gives the correct relic density, lightest Higgs mass of 125 GeV and is consistent with constraints on SUSY from LHC. This dark matter model evades t…
We consider supersymmetric scenarios, compatible with all cosmological and phenomenological requirements, where the lightest SUSY particles (LSPs) are the neutralino and a quasi degenerate gluino. We study the neutralino relic abundance, focusing on gluino (co-)annihilation effects. In case the neutralino is bino-like, in a wide mass window the relic abundance is naturally driven in the correct range for the LSP to be the main cold dark matter constituent. We show that the gluino is the strongest possible coannihilating partner of a bino-like neutralino in the general MSSM. Moreover, contrary …
We consider effective operators describing Dark Matter (DM) interactions with Standard Model fermions. In the non-relativistic limit of the DM field, the operators can be organized according to their mass dimension and their velocity behaviour, i.e. whether they describe s- or p-wave annihilations. The analysis is carried out for self-conjugate DM (real scalar or Majorana fermion). In this case, the helicity suppression at work in the annihilation into fermions is lifted by electroweak bremsstrahlung. We construct and study all dimension-8 operators encoding such an effect. These results are o…
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…
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…
The hard photon productions from bremsstrahlung and annihilation with scattering that arise at two loop level are estimated from a chemically non-equilibrated quark gluon plasma using the frame work of thermal field theory. Although, the rate of photon production is suppressed due to unsaturated phase space, the above suppression is relatively smaller than expected due to an additional collinear enhancement (arise due to decrease in thermal quark mass) as compared to it's equilibrium counterpart. Interestingly, unlike the one loop case, the reduction in the two loop processes are found to be i…
We present here a study of the direct and indirect detection prospects of a generic dark matter simplified model, in which the Majorana dark matter interacts only with a Standard Model lepton and a pair of uncolored mixing scalar mediators. We first show that the mixing angle significantly changes the feature of internal bremsstrahlung, as well as the flux ratio of $γγ$ and $γZ$ line signals. The $CP$-violation phase will introduce an polarization asymmetry in the $γγ$ final state. Then we study the direct detection prospect and discuss the complimentarity of these two search strategies.
An upper limit on the total annihilation cross section of dark matter (DM) has recently been derived from the observed atmospheric neutrino background. We show that comparable bounds are obtained for DM masses around the TeV scale by observations of the diffuse gamma-ray flux by EGRET, because electroweak bremsstrahlung leads to non-negligible electromagnetic branching ratios, even if DM particles only couple to neutrinos at tree level. A better mapping and the partial resolution of the diffuse gamma-ray background into astrophysical sources by the GLAST satellite will improve this bound in th…
We calculate the complete one-loop quantum corrections to the helicity eigenstate chargino pair production cross sections in polarized electron positron collisions, within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We calculate the non-QED corrections using the helicity amplitudes formalism, and Dimensional Regularization to deal with ultraviolet divergences. We calculate QED corrections using the dipole subtraction formalism to extract soft and collinear divergences in Bremsstrahlung, canceling them with the infrared divergences from virtual QED corrections. We show numerical results for the …
We compute the full one-loop EW contributions of O(α_S alpha_EM^3) entering the electron-positron into two b-quarks and one gluon cross section at the Z peak and LC energies. We include both factorisable and non-factorisable virtual corrections, photon bremsstrahlung but not the real emission of W^\pm and Z bosons. Their importance for the measurement of alpha_S from jet rates and shape variables is explained qualitatively and illustrated quantitatively. Their impact on the forward-backward asymmetry is also analysed.
We explore the possibility that the muon $g-2$ anomaly and the nature of dark matter can be simultaneously explained within the framework of gaugino mediation, focusing on bino-like dark matter where the observed abundance is obtained via co-annihilations. The minimal model with non-universal gaugino masses is excluded by stau vacuum instability, although this constraint can be somewhat relaxed via the addition of a universal soft scalar mass (or $B-L$ gaugino mediation). A more promising alternative is gaugino+Higgs mediation, which significantly raises the soft masses of the third generation…
Bino-like dark matter in supersymmetric theories tends to suffer from over-production. This problem can be evaded if there is another gaugino which has a mass close to the bino mass so that it enhances the annihilation rate of bino dark matter through coannihilation. We study such possibilities in high-scale supersymmetric models, and show that searches for long-lived particles with displaced vertices can test the bino-gaugino coannihilation scenario in the forthcoming LHC experiments.
We supplement the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with vector-like copies of standard model particles. Such 4th generation particles can raise the Higgs boson mass to the observed value without requiring very heavy superpartners, improving naturalness and the prospects for discovering supersymmetry at the LHC. Here we show that these new particles are also motivated cosmologically: in the MSSM, pure Bino dark matter typically overcloses the Universe, but 4th generation particles open up new annihilation channels, allowing Binos to have the correct thermal relic density without res…
We present a code to compute the relic density of dark matter in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). Dominant corrections to the Higgs masses are calculated with NMHDECAY as well as theoretical and collider constraints. All neutralino annihilation and coannihilation processes are then computed with an extended version of micrOMEGAs, taking into acount higher order corrections to Higgs vertices. We explore the parameter space of the NMSSM and consider in particular the case of a bino LSP, of a mixed bino-higgsino LSP and of a singlino LSP. As compared to the MSSM, neutral…
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…
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 …
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…
We calculate elementary proton-proton and neutron-proton bremsstrahlung and their contribution to the $e^+e^-$ invariant mass distribution. At 4.9 GeV, the proton-proton contribution is larger than neutron-proton, but it is small compared to recent data. We then make a first calculation of bremsstrahlung in nucleon-nucleon reactions with multi-hadron final states. Again at 4.9 GeV, the many-body bremsstrahlung is larger than simple nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung by more than an order of magnitude in the low-mass region. When the bremsstrahlung contributions are summed with Dalitz decay of the …
In the Kaluza-Klein (KK) scenario with n large extra dimensions where gravity propagates in the 4+n dimensional bulk of spacetime while gauge and matter fields are confined to a four dimensional subspace, the light graviton KK modes can be produced in the Sun, red giants and supernovae. We study the energy-loss rates through photon-photon annihilation, electron-positron annihilation, gravi-Compton-Primakoff scattering, gravi-bremsstrahlung and nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung, and derive lower limits to the string scale M_S. The most stringent lower limit obtained from SN1987A leads to $M_S> 30 …
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…
We present the full O(alpha_s) longitudinal spin-spin correlations for heavy-quark pair production at e+ e- high-energy colliders in closed analytical form. In such reactions, quark and antiquark have strongly correlated spins, and the longitudinal components are dominant. For the explicit computation of the QCD bremsstrahlung contributions, new phase-space integrals are derived. Explicit numerical estimates are given for t t_bar and b b_bar production. Around the Z-peak, QCD one-loop corrections depolarize the spin-spin asymmetry for bottom quark pairs by approximately -4%. For top pair produ…
Light dark matter annihilating into electron-positron pairs emits a significant amount of internal bremsstrahlung that may contribute to the cosmic gamma-ray background. The amount of emitted gamma-rays depends on the dark matter clumping factor. Recent calculations indicate that this value should be of order $10^6-10^7$. That allows us to calculate the expected gamma-ray background contribution from dark matter annihilation. We find that the light dark matter model can be ruled out if a constant thermally-averaged cross section is assumed (s-wave annihilation). For more massive dark matter ca…
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…
