Supersymmetric resonant dark matter: A thermal model for the AMS-02 positron excess

We propose a comprehensive theory of dark matter that explains the recent proliferation of unexpected observations in high-energy astrophysics. Cosmic ray spectra from ATIC and PAMELA require a WIMP with mass M_chi ~ 500 - 800 GeV that annihilates into leptons at a level well above that expected from a thermal relic. Signals from WMAP and EGRET reinforce this interpretation. Taken together, we argue these facts imply the presence of a GeV-scale new force in the dark sector. The long range allows a Sommerfeld enhancement to boost the annihilation cross section as required, without altering the weak scale annihilation cross section during dark matter freezeout in the early universe. If the dark matter annihilates into the new force carrier, phi, its low mass can force it to decay dominantly into leptons. If the force carrier is a non-Abelian gauge boson, the dark matter is part of a multiplet of states, and splittings between these states are naturally generated with size alpha m_phi ~ MeV, leading to the eXciting dark matter (XDM) scenario previously proposed to explain the positron annihilation in the galactic center observed by the INTEGRAL satellite. Somewhat smaller splittings would also be expected, providing a natural source for the parameters of the inelastic dark matter (iDM) explanation for the DAMA annual modulation signal. Since the Sommerfeld enhancement is most significant at low velocities, early dark matter halos at redshift ~10 potentially produce observable effects on the ionization history of the universe, and substructure is more detectable than with a conventional WIMP. Moreover, the low velocity dispersion of dwarf galaxies and Milky Way subhalos can greatly increase the substructure annihilation signal.

We show that the bound from the electroweak data on the size of extra dimensions accessible to all the standard model fields is rather loose. These "universal" extra dimensions could have a compactification scale as low as 300 GeV for one extra dimension. This is because the Kaluza-Klein number is conserved and thus the contributions to the electroweak observables arise only from loops. The main constraint comes from weak-isospin violation effects. We also compute the contributions to the S parameter and the \(Zb\bar{b}\) vertex. The direct bound on the compactification scale is set by CDF and D0 in the few hundred GeV range, and the Run II of the Tevatron will either discover extra dimensions or else it could significantly raise the bound on the compactification scale. In the case of two universal extra dimensions, the current lower bound on the compactification scale depends logarithmically on the ultra-violet cutoff of the higher dimensional theory, but can be estimated to lie between 400 and 800 GeV. With three or more extra dimensions, the cutoff dependence may be too strong to allow an estimate.

A precision measurement by AMS of the positron fraction in primary cosmic rays in the energy range from 0.5 to 500 GeV based on 10.9 million positron and electron events is presented. This measurement extends the energy range of our previous observation and increases its precision. The new results show, for the first time, that above ∼200  GeV the positron fraction no longer exhibits an increase with energy.