Cosmic ray backgrounds for dark matter indirect detection

Understand

Recently, dark matter indirect searches have gained a lot of attention, mostly due to the possibility of recent anomalies in cosmic rays and microwave sky maps being due to the annihilation or decay of dark matter.

• In this thesis, we argue however that these signals are plagued by irreducible astrophysical backgrounds and show how plausible conventional physics can mimic the alleged dark matter signals.
• In particular, we consider the possibility that the rise in the positron fraction observed by the PAMELA satellite is due to the production through (hadronic) cosmic ray spallation and subsequent acceleration of positrons, in the same sources as the primary cosmic rays.
• We present a new analytical estimate of the range of possible fluctuations in the high energy electron flux due to the discreteness of plausible cosmic ray sources.