Cosmic-ray and gamma-ray constraints on very-heavy dark matter decay
S. Das*, K. Murase and T. Fujii
Pre-published on:
July 25, 2023
Published on:
—
Abstract
Decaying very-heavy dark matter (VHDM) particles at energies $\gtrsim 10^9$ GeV can contribute to the ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray spectrum. However, the composition measurements by Pierre Auger Observatory indicate the presence of heavy-nuclei dominance at the highest energies. We constrain the flux of $p+\overline{p}$ from Galactic and extragalactic VHDM using the latest spectrum and composition data and incorporating an astrophysical component. This provides improved limits on the VHDM decay timescale at $\lesssim 10^{12}$ GeV. We also calculate the flux of UHE photons from VHDM decay and find that the constraints obtained using integral $\gamma$-ray flux upper limits from Auger are more stringent by a factor of $\sim10$. This improves our limits to VHDM lifetime by a factor of two compared to earlier studies.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.444.1487
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