Dark Matter Annihilation Signals: The Importance of Radiative Corrections

Understand

Being able to safely distinguish astrophysical from potential dark matter (DM) annihilation signals is of utmost importance for indirect DM searches.

• To this end, one has to rely on distinctive -- and unique -- spectral signatures to look for.
• Internal bremsstrahlung (IB), unavoidable in the presence of charged annihilation products, provides such a signature.
• In fact, as it generically dominates the gamma-ray spectrum expected from DM annihilations, at high energies, it may well turn out to be more important for indirect DM searches than the traditionally looked-for line signals.