Lifetime constraints for late dark matter decay

Bell, Nicole F.; Galea, Ahmad J.; Petraki, Kalliopi

doi:10.1103/physrevd.82.023514

Cited by 37 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…The light red band shows the same result for complete decay into bb pairs. The black lines show the best possible current reach of experiments searching for the decay products directly, for decay into photons (solid ), electrons (dashed ) and neutrinos (dotted ), scanning the energy of the decay products from 4 keV to 60 TeV [35].…”

Section: B Comparison To Previous Boundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy injection and absorption in the cosmic dark ages

2013

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Dark matter annihilation or de-excitation, decay of metastable species, or other new physics may inject energetic electrons and photons into the photon-baryon fluid during and after recombination. As such particles cool, they partition their energy into a large number of efficiently ionizing electrons and photons, which in turn modify the ionization history. Recent work has provided a simple method for constraining arbitrary energy deposition histories using the cosmic microwave background (CMB); in this note, we present results describing the energy deposition histories for photons and electrons as a function of initial energy and injection redshift. With these results, the CMB bounds on any process injecting some arbitrary spectrum of electrons, positrons and/or photons with arbitrary redshift dependence can be immediately computed.PACS numbers: 95.35.+d,98.80.Es

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Section: B Comparison To Previous Boundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy injection and absorption in the cosmic dark ages

2013

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“…For long-lifetime decaying DM, there are stringent constraints on the decay lifetime from a wide range of indirect searches (e.g. [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]). In general, these constraints are considerably stronger than our limits, probing lifetimes as long as 10 27−28 s. The exception is for MeV − GeV DM decaying to e + e − pairs; these pairs are difficult to detect directly.…”

Section: General Constraints On Dm Decaymentioning

confidence: 99%

General constraints on dark matter decay from the cosmic microwave background

2017

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Precise measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background can be used to constrain the annihilation and decay of dark matter. In this work, we demonstrate via principal component analysis that the imprint of dark matter decay on the cosmic microwave background can be approximately parameterized by a single number for any given dark matter model. We develop a simple prescription for computing this model-dependent detectability factor, and demonstrate how this approach can be used to set model-independent bounds on a large class of decaying dark matter scenarios. We repeat our analysis for decay lifetimes shorter than the age of the universe, allowing us to set constraints on metastable species other than the dark matter decaying at early times, and decays that only liberate a tiny fraction of the dark matter mass energy. We set precise bounds and validate our principal component analysis using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach and Planck 2015 data.PACS numbers: 95.35.+d,98.80.Es

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“…In figure 4 we show conservative ('worst-case') constraints on the decay rate in this scenario; we assume that all decays proceed via B → L + γγ, producing a sharp spectrum of photons and maximising the detectability of the signal. Note that, since the bounds from decays to electrons are at most a factor of ∼ 100 worse than from those to photons [47], then in the absence of a small ( 0.1 MeV) mass splitting, if annihilation signals are to dominate over decays it is a requirement that most of the energy from decays is dumped into other hidden sector states (or into neutrinos). Otherwise, since only a small proportion of the emitted L have annihilated by the present day, the SM states emitted in every decay will be a stronger signal.…”

Section: B -L Mass Splitting and L Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also the possibility of indirect signals from the B → L +· · · decays themselves, if the other decay products include SM states [47]. In figure 4 we show conservative ('worst-case') constraints on the decay rate in this scenario; we assume that all decays proceed via B → L + γγ, producing a sharp spectrum of photons and maximising the detectability of the signal.…”

Section: B -L Mass Splitting and L Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annihilation signals from asymmetric dark matter

Hardy

Lasenby

Unwin

2014

J. High Energ. Phys.

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Abstract:In the simplest models of asymmetric dark matter (ADM) annihilation signals are not expected, since the DM is non-self-conjugate and the relic density of anti-DM is negligible. We investigate a new class of models in which a symmetric DM component, in the 'low-mass' 1-10 GeV regime favoured for linking the DM and baryon asymmetries, is repopulated through decays. We find that, in models without significant velocity dependence of the annihilation cross section, observational constraints generally force these decays to be (cosmologically) slow. These late decays can give rise to gamma-ray signal morphologies differing from usual annihilation profiles. A distinctive feature of such models is that signals may be absent from dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

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Lifetime constraints for late dark matter decay

Cited by 37 publications

References 82 publications

Energy injection and absorption in the cosmic dark ages

Energy injection and absorption in the cosmic dark ages

General constraints on dark matter decay from the cosmic microwave background

Annihilation signals from asymmetric dark matter

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