| Gravitational Dark Matter Decay and the ATIC/PPB-BETS Excess (2009) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| The hidden scalar field, which couples to the visible sector only through Planck-suppressed interactions, is a candidate for dark matter owing to its long lifetime. Decay of such a scalar field offers observational tests of this scenario. We show that decay of the hidden scalar field can explain the observed excess of high-energy positrons/electrons observed by ATIC/PPB-BETS, for a suitable choice of the mass and the vacuum expectation value of the field. We also show that the same choice of the parameters gives the observed dark matter abundance. Such a remarkable coincidence suggests that the Planck-suppressed interactions may be responsible for the observed excess in the cosmic-ray positrons/electrons.. Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure | |||||||||
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