A fussy revisitation of antiprotons as a tool for Dark Matter searches

Antiprotons are regarded as a powerful probe for Dark Matter (DM) indirect detection and indeed current data from PAMELA have been shown to lead to stringent constraints. However, in order to exploit their constraining/discovery power properly and especially in anticipation of the exquisite accuracy of upcoming data from AMS-02, great attention must be put into effects (linked to their propagation in the Galaxy) which may be perceived as subleading but actually prove to be quite relevant. Using a semi-analytic code for rapidity, we revisit the computation of the astrophysical background and of the DM antiproton fluxes. Like in the fully numerical standard calculations, we include the effects of: diffusive reacceleration, energy losses including tertiary component and solar modulation (in a force field approximation). We show that their inclusion can somewhat modify the current bounds, even at large DM masses, and that a wrong interpretation of the data may arise if they are not taken into account. At the present level of accuracy of the data from PAMELA, the inclusion of the above effects amounts to changing the constraints, with respect to the case in which they are neglected, of up to about 40% at a DM mass of 1 TeV and 30% at 10 TeV. When the AMS-02 level of precision is reached, including them would strengthen (lessen) the bounds on the annihilation cross section by up to a factor of 15 below (above) a DM mass of 300 GeV. The numerical results for the astrophysical background are provided in terms of fit functions; the results for Dark Matter are incorporated in the new release of the PPPC4DMID.