English

Comment on "Dark Matter Annihilation Can Produce a Detectable Antihelium Flux through $\bar\Lambda_b$ Decays"

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2021-05-04 v1

Abstract

In a recent Letter, it was suggested that a previously neglected Standard Model process, namely, the production of antihelium-3 nuclei through decays of Λˉb\bar\Lambda_b baryons can lead to a flux of antihelium-3 from dark matter annihilations detectable by AMS-02. We show that an essential condition for its detectability -- the introduction of the "Λˉb\bar\Lambda_b tune" of Pythia -- is excluded by a wealth of measurements of (anti-) baryon and (anti-) meson production at accelerators. Moreover, we argue that Monte Carlo generators like Pythia should not be used to predict branching ratios like BR(Λˉbuˉdu(ud0))BR(\bar\Lambda_b\to \bar u d u (ud_0)), which control the formation rate of antihelium-3. In particular, we show that Λˉb\bar\Lambda_b decays which proceed via diquark formation are overestimated by Pythia using its standard settings, which are further enhanced in the "Λˉb\bar\Lambda_b tune".

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.00799,
  title  = {Comment on "Dark Matter Annihilation Can Produce a Detectable Antihelium Flux through $\bar\Lambda_b$ Decays"},
  author = {M. Kachelriess and S. Ostapchenko and J. Tjemsland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.00799},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

1.2 pages