PAMELA and galactic dark matter

by Pierre Salati (LAPTH)

Friday 3 Apr 2009, 11:30 → 12:30 Europe/Zurich

Geneva University, Auditoire 234, 24 E. Ansermet

One of the favorite candidates to the astronomical dark matter is a massive and weakly interacting particle. Such a species arises naturally in the framework of supersymmetry or in extensions of the Standard Model à la Kaluza-Klein. Should they pervade the halo of the Milky Way, these dark matter particles would annihilate with each other and produce positrons and antiprotons whose spectra would then become distorted. A positron excess has actually been reported by the PAMELA collaboration above 10 GeV whereas the antiproton flux seems compatible with conventional astrophysical processes. I will present these observations together with their current explanations and analyze the consequences on the properties of the putative dark matter particles.