Speaker: Alessandro Cuoco, RWTH-Aachen

When/Where: 4:30 PM, May 31, 2017 (Sala Celeste)

Abstract: Several observations provide evidence an invisible component, called Dark Matter, permeating the Cosmos, which exerts its effects through the gravitational force. Yet, so far, searches for the dark matter particle have been unfruitful. A complementary mean to investigate the nature of dark matter is through the so-called indirect detection via cosmic rays. In the talk I will discuss the principles of dark matter indirect detection via cosmic rays, and
the main cosmic-ray observations used for this type of dark matter searches. In the second part, I will discuss more in detail the case of cosmic-ray antiprotons, which have been recently measured by the AMS-02 experiment with high precision, and which show an interesting hint for a dark matter particle with a mass of about 100 GeV and annihilation cross section close to the thermal relic value.