{
  "id": "1903.01472",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2019-03-04T19:00:01.000Z",
  "updated": "2019-03-04T19:00:01.000Z",
  "title": "Scrutinizing the evidence for dark matter in cosmic-ray antiprotons",
  "authors": [
    "Alessandro Cuoco",
    "Jan Heisig",
    "Lukas Klamt",
    "Michael Korsmeier",
    "Michael Krämer"
  ],
  "comment": "24 pages, 10 figures",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.HE",
    "hep-ph"
  ],
  "abstract": "Global fits of primary and secondary cosmic-ray (CR) fluxes measured by AMS-02 have great potential to study CR propagation models and search for exotic sources of antimatter such as annihilating dark matter (DM). Previous studies of AMS-02 antiprotons revealed a possible hint for a DM signal which, however, could be affected by systematic uncertainties. To test the robustness of such a DM signal, in this work we systematically study two important sources of uncertainties: the antiproton production cross-sections needed to calculate the source spectra of secondary antiprotons and the potential correlations in the experimental data, so far not provided by the AMS-02 collaboration. To investigate the impact of cross-section uncertainties we perform globals fits of CR spectra including a covariance matrix determined from nuclear cross-section measurements. As an alternative approach, we perform a joint fit to both the CR and cross-section data. The two methods agree and show that cross-section uncertainties have a small effect on the CR fits and on the significance of a potential DM signal, which we find to be at the level of $3\\sigma$. Correlations in the data can have a much larger impact. To illustrate this effect, we determine possible benchmark models for the correlations in a data-driven method. The inclusion of correlations strongly improves the constraints on the propagation model and, furthermore, enhances the significance of the DM signal up to above $5\\sigma$. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of providing the covariance of the experimental data, which is needed to fully exploit their potential.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2019-03-04T19:00:01.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "dark matter",
      "cosmic-ray antiprotons",
      "dm signal",
      "study cr propagation models",
      "correlations"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 24,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}