Francesco Nozzoli

 

TIFPA

 

Dark matter indirect search with Anti-Deuterons in space

 

April 29, 2020; 9:30 a.m.

 

ABSTRACT

 

The observation of GeV and sub-GeV anti-deuteron in the cosmic ray flux, could be a very strong signature for dark matter annihilation in our galaxy.
Well motivated theories beyond the Standard Model contain viable dark matter candidates, which could lead to a significant enhancement of the antideuteron flux due to annihilation or decay of dark matter particles.
This flux contribution is believed to be relatively large at low energies, where the secondary background is suppressed, which leads to an high interest in the development of new detection signatures for low energy antideuteron.
Anti Deuteron Helium Detector (ADHD) project is aiming to study the signatures offered by an high pressure He target for the identification of antideuterons in space.
In particular exotic atoms are produced by stopping antiprotons/antideuterons in the gas and the captured antiparticle can orbit the He nucleus for microseconds before the annihilation.
This meta-stability is an unique (and well measured) feature for the He target that is not expected/observed for other target nuclei, moreover the characteristic delayed annihilation in He is a distinctive signature to identify the antimatter nature of the stopping particle.
Perspectives for a possible detector in space and the status of the characterization of a 200 Bar detector prototype in the INFN-TIFPA laboratory will be shown.