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Hadronic Footprint of GeV-Mass Dark Matter
by Tilman Plehn, Peter Reimitz, Peter Richardson
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Tilman Plehn · Peter Reimitz |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.11147v2 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2020-03-24 01:00 |
| Submitted by: | Reimitz, Peter |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Phenomenological |
Abstract
GeV-scale dark matter is an increasingly attractive target for direct detection, indirect detection, and collider searches. Its annihilation into hadronic final states produces a challenging zoo of light hadronic resonances. We update Herwig7 to study the photon and positron spectra from annihilation through a vector mediator. It covers dark matter masses between 250 MeV and 5 GeV and includes an error estimate.
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Report #2 by Anonymous (Referee 2) on 2020-4-29 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:1911.11147v2, delivered 2020-04-29, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.1646
Strengths
Very interesting paper filling the gap in what the DM annihilation spectrum might look like for masses between 250 MeV and 5 GeV
Weaknesses
1. on page 3-4, in the discussion of "weakening the CMB limits" the discussion should tackle the issue of how one can weaken those limits while at the same time giving some indirect detection signal - the examples quoted, such as asymmetric dark matter, are pointless.
2. Statements such as "This allows us to cover DM masses down to twice the pion mass" should be better qualified: the authors limit themselves to only one mediator case, vector mediator, and they should clarify that their results and methods are intrinsically limited to that case, unlike other tools that are largely mediator-independent.
3. There should be a discussion of possible final-state interaction effects
4. There are a few typos (e.g. on page 14 "An list of all channels")
Report
Very interesting paper filling the gap in what the DM annihilation spectrum might look like for masses between 250 MeV and 5 GeV.
I have a few points that need to be addressed in a revised version:
1. on page 3-4, in the discussion of "weakening the CMB limits" the discussion should tackle the issue of how one can weaken those limits while at the same time giving some indirect detection signal - the examples quoted, such as asymmetric dark matter, are pointless.
2. Statements such as "This allows us to cover DM masses down to twice the pion mass" should be better qualified: the authors limit themselves to only one mediator case, vector mediator, and they should clarify that their results and methods are intrinsically limited to that case, unlike other tools that are largely mediator-independent.
3. There should be a discussion of possible final-state interaction effects
4. There are a few typos (e.g. on page 14 "An list of all channels")
Requested changes
See above
Report #1 by Anonymous (Referee 1) on 2020-4-20 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:1911.11147v2, delivered 2020-04-20, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.1631
Report
The authors present an update of HERWIG7 that allows to calculate the photon and positron spectra produced in the annihilation of Majorana dark matter particles through a light vector mediator. They focus in the mass range between 250 MeV and 5 GeV, where the results from the most popular dark matter tools start to lose validity. Using the latest results for various hadronic currents, the authors calculate the photon and positron spectra for various annihilation final states, and they find significant differences with respect to the ones obtained with the published tools. The analysis is solid, the paper is well written ad the results are of relevance for indirect dark matter searches. In view of this, I am happy to recommend publication of the manuscript in the present form.
Author: Peter Reimitz on 2020-06-08 [id 851]
(in reply to Report 2 on 2020-04-29)Changes made in the new version of the paper:
In section, we explain in more detail what we mean by evading CMB bounds with asymmetric dark matter while still having an indirect detection signal. We refer to a paper from Kathryn Zurren for more details.
We made it clearer in the text that we only focus on vector mediators, e.g. in the abstract, in section 2 where we explain why we choose these models, and in the sentence quoted by the referee above. We also mention in the beginning of section 3 that the established tools are mediator-independent.
In the first part of the Appendix, we discuss possible final-state interaction and that they are not included in our approach.
We tried to correct some more typos.