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Anapole dark matter annihilation into photons

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2017-06-27 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

In models of anapole dark matter (DM), the DM candidate is a Majorana fermion whose primary interaction with standard model (SM) particles is through an anapole coupling to off-shell photons. As such, at tree-level, anapole DM undergoes p-wave annihilation into SM charged fermions via a virtual photon. But, generally, Majorana fermions are polarizable, coupling to two real photons. This fact admits the possibility that anapole DM can annihilate into two photons in an s-wave process. Using an explicit model, we compute both the tree-level and diphoton contributions to the anapole DM annihilation cross section. Depending on model parameters, the s-wave process can either rival or be dwarfed by the p-wave contribution to the total annihilation cross section. Subjecting the model to astrophysical upper bounds on the s-wave annihilation mode, we rule out the model with large s-wave annihilation.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.08029,
  title  = {Anapole dark matter annihilation into photons},
  author = {David C. Latimer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.08029},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:28:43.052Z