English

Sommerfeld Enhancement from Background Force and the Galactic Center GeV Excess

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-01-01 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We study the impact of background-induced forces on dark matter (DM) annihilation and their implications for indirect detection. In the presence of a finite number density of background particles, loop-level interactions can generate an effective force that is significantly enhanced relative to the vacuum case. We construct a two-component DM model in which the dominant component is a fermionic particle χ\chi and the subdominant component is an ultralight pseudoscalar particle ϕ\phi. The annihilation of χ\chi proceeds through the p-wave channel and produces gamma-ray emission. The finite density of ϕ\phi particles induces a background-enhanced force between χ\chi particles, leading to a sizable Sommerfeld enhancement of the annihilation. We show that a viable region of parameter space in this model can account for the gamma-ray excess observed in the Galactic Center using Fermi-LAT data. The background-induced force substantially amplifies the Sommerfeld enhancement and thus enlarges the parameter space capable of explaining the excess, highlighting the importance of background effects in astrophysical environments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.24188,
  title  = {Sommerfeld Enhancement from Background Force and the Galactic Center GeV Excess},
  author = {Yu Cheng and Shuailiang Ge},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.24188},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 4 figures