Constraints on box-shaped cosmic ray electron feature from dark matter annihilation with the AMS-02 and DAMPE data

Abstract

Precise measurements of spectra of cosmic ray electrons and positrons can effectively probe the nature of dark matter (DM) particles. In a class of models where DM particles initially annihilate into a pair of intermediate particles which then decay into standard model particles, box-shaped spectra can be generated. Such a kind of spectra are distinct from astrophysical backgrounds, and can probably be regarded as characteristic features of the DM annihilation. In this work, we search for such a feature in the total electron plus positron spectrum measured by AMS-02 and DAMPE. No significant evidence for such a DM annihilation component has been found. The 95\% confidence level upper limits of the velocity-weighted annihilation cross section are derived, which range from $\sim 10^{-26}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ for DM mass of 50 GeV to $\sim 10^{-23}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ for DM mass of 10 TeV.

Comments: 16 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in PRD