The last decade brought spectacular advances in the astrophysics of cosmic rays and gamma-ray astronomy. These observations pose a considerable challenge to conventional astrophysics thus leaving an ample discovery space for new phenomena. Understanding the conventional astrophysical backgrounds is vital in moving to the new territory. In my talk I will discuss recent developments in...
The current generation of cosmic-ray (CR) experiments in the GeV-TeV range has reached an unprecedented level of precision, unveiling fine-details of the energy spectra. The interpretation of these measurements could require a profound revision of the widely accepted paradigm of CR acceleration at galactic sources and/or of their transport through the interstellar environments.
In my talk I...
The fluxes and flux ratios of charged elementary particles in cosmic rays are presented in the absolute rigidity range from 1 to 1000 GV. In the absolute rigidity range ∼60 to ∼500 GV, the antiproton and proton are found to have nearly identical rigidity dependence. Below 60 GV, the antiproton-to-proton, ratio reaches a maximum. Future perspectives for antiproton flux measurement will also be...
The cosmic-ray antiproton spectrum as measured by AMS-02 contains an excess at 10-20 GeV relative to the predictions of standard transport models. I will discuss the systematic uncertainties associated with this signal and the implications of the excess for annihilating dark matter.
During the last decade, the space-based experiment AMS-02 has drastically reduced the measurement uncertainty of primary and secondary cosmic-ray fluxes. Therefore, global fits of these fluxes provide great potential to study comic-ray propagation models and search for exotic sources of antimatter such as annihilating dark matter. Previous studies of AMS-02 antiprotons revealed a possible hint...
The cosmic-ray (CR) antiprotons, which primarily come from the inelastic collisions between the CR protons (and helium) and the interstellar medium, are effective to constrain the dark matter (DM) models.
The background parameters about the propagation, source injection, and solar modulation are based on results inferred from newest AMS-02 and Voyager data, and on the cross section of...
High-precision measurement of the cosmic-ray antiproton spectrum and sensitive search for cosmological antihelium has been published using the data from BESS-Polar II (Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer) flight in 2007/2008 for core study of the early Universe using elementary particle measurements.
The most sensitive antideuteron search reported used the data...
The satellite-borne PAMELA experiment was launched on the 15th June
2006 from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Until January 2016 PAMELA made high-precision measurements of the charged
component of cosmic-rays over a wide energy range. Because of its long-duration operation,
PAMELA represents an ideal detector for cosmic-ray solar modulation studies.
The PAMELA collaboration published...
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is operating aboard the International Space Station since May 2011, measuring cosmic rays in the GeV to TeV energy range. The isotopic composition of cosmic ray nuclei is strongly connected to their propagation in the Milky Way. Deuterons can be efficiently separated from the background of protons and helium nuclei by means of their mass, reconstructed...
The search for antideuterons and antihelium events primary cosmic rays with the data collected in the first 7 years of AMS-02 data collection will be discussed.
Cosmic-ray anti-deuterium and anti-helium have long been suggested as probes of dark matter, as their secondary astrophysical production was thought extremely scarce. But the prediction of the secondary anti-nuclei flux remains uncertain, as the astrophysical production is dominated by pp collisions, where laboratory cross section data is severely lacking. I will discuss attempts at tackling...
AMS-02 might have discovered in its data a few anti-helium events. These are presumably ordinary cosmic rays that have been mis-reconstructed, owing to a very rare pattern of their tracks in the detector. To illustrate how problematic these anti-helium events would be, should they be confirmed, we have updated the calculation of the anti-helium cosmic ray fluxes at the Earth from secondary...
In this talk, I will discuss consequences of the potential detection of anti-helium-3 and -4 events by AMS-02 and in particular the very surprising isotopic ratio in cosmic rays that it would indicate. After showing that spallation from primary hydrogen and helium nuclei onto the ISM cannot account for the measured fluxes, I will argue that dark matter annihilation or decay face similar...
The General Anti Particle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a balloon-borne cosmic-ray experiment scheduled for long duration balloon flights from McMurdo station in the Antarctic. Its primary science goal is the search for light antinuclei in cosmic rays at energies in the region below 0.3 GeV/n. This energy region is of great interest and still mostly uncharted. Searches for light antimatter nucleons...
The observation of GeV and sub-Gev anti-deuteron in the cosmic ray flux, could be a very strong signature of dark matter annihilation in our galaxy.
Our project, called ADHD (Anti Deuteron Helium Detector) aims to study the signatures offered by an high pressure He target where anti-deuterons can be captured by He atoms.
The exotic He atoms produced by stopping anti-protons/anti-deuterons in...
I will review the status of predictions for antihelium production from dark matter annihilation or decay, highlighting the role of theory uncertainties and the constraints from antiproton measurements. I will also discuss potential dark matter candidates likely to produce significant amounts of cosmic antinuclei.
Cosmic-ray (CR) antihelium can be an important observable for dark matter (DM) indirect searches due to extremely low secondary backgrounds towards low energies. In most DM models, the predicted CR antihelium flux is strongly correlated with that of CR antiprotons. Thus the upper limits on the DM annihilation cross sections from the current antiproton data can be used to place stringent limits...
Cosmic ray experiments are reaching the sensitivity where they can realistically probe the annihilation of thermal WIMPs. Due to the tiny experimental errors, uncertainties in the astrophysical backgrounds have become the most
limiting factor for dark matter detection. I will use the combination of antiproton, boron to carbon and positron data in order to systematically reduce uncertainties...
The search and measurement of cosmic-ray antimatter provides a great potential to study annihilating dark matter in our Galaxy.Previous analyzes of the antiproton spectrum determined by the AMS-02 experiment revealed a potential hint for a DM signal with a mass around 70 GeV and a thermal annihilation cross section. This putative signal is, however, affected by several systematic uncertainties...
We compute the energy spectra of antideuterons and antihelium in cosmic rays in a scenario where hadronic interactions inside supernova remnants can produce a diffusively shock-accelerated “source component” of secondary antinuclei along with their standard secondary component expected from cosmic ray collisions in the interstellar gas.
The production of light clusters of (anti-) nuclei like (anti-) deuteron, (anti-) helium or (anti-) trition is usually described by coalescence models. In $e^+e^-$ collisions and dark matter annihilations, one imposes typically the coalescence condition in momentum space, including often the two-particle correlations provided by Monte Carlo simulations on an event-by-event basis. In contrast,...
A new study about the production of antideuterons in high-energy cosmic-ray collisions is presented in this work. Antideuteron production cross-section is obtained through the coalescence model, which is simulated using an afterburner and the Monte Carlo generator EPOS-LHC. Coalescence model key parameter ($p_0$) is calculated from the comparison of simulation to updated collider data,...
Presence of larger antinuclei (i.e. antideuterons, antihelium) in the cosmic rays (CR) can be smoking gun signatures of indirect detection of Dark Matter (DM) annihilations. Recent reports of antihelium nuclei candidate events by AMS-02 experiment have generated interest in the community. However, lack of observations of antideuterons in CR so far have opened up questions about possible...
The detection of cosmic-ray antideuterons is a potential breakthrough approach for the identification of dark matter. Antideuterons can also be produced in interactions of abundant primary cosmic-ray particles (mostly protons) with the interstellar medium (mostly hydrogen). However, production of light (anti)nuclei in proton-proton interactions is not very well understood. A better...
The high energy pp, p-Pb, and Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC offer a unique tool to study the production of light (anti-)nuclei.
Thanks to its excellent particle identification and tracking capabilities, the ALICE detector allows for the measurement of deuterons, tritons, $^3$He, $^4$He and their corresponding anti-nuclei in a wide momentum range.
Results on the production yields of light nuclei...
The search for low-energy cosmic anti-ions may reveal exotic production processes---such as dark-matter annihilation---because of the low production rate of such ions through inelastic scattering of cosmic-ray protons with the interstellar medium. However, a precise prediction of the expected antiparticle fluxes is challenging, since their production cross sections are not well known; they are...
In this talk, work towards a measurement of the (anti)deuteron cross-section in high energy proton-proton collisions using the LHCb detector will be presented. This measurement will help to constrain (anti)deuteron production models, and will pave the way for measurements of (anti)deuterons in b-hadron decays and pHe collisions.
LHCb is a single-arm forward spectrometer at the LHC, optimised...
The abundance of cosmic-ray anti-matter components as a function of the energy, is one of the most promising ways to spot signatures of dark matter annihilation in our galaxy.
The challenge in this line of research resides however in the ability to predict the natural, i.e. not from dark matter, abundance of these species; namely positrons, anti-protons and anti-deuterons.
These particles...
The space based cosmic rays experiments PAMELA, AMS and FERMI have covered in the last decade the physics of cosmic rays up to the TeV scale with high precision. To extend this energy range significantly requires a new experimental concept. In this presentation a detector concept will be outlined for a large scale experiment at the Lagrange Point 2 (LP-2). It consists of a large high...
