Potential for precision measurement of low-energy antiprotons with GAPS for dark matter and primordial black hole physics

The general antiparticle spectrometer (GAPS) experiment is a proposed indirect dark matter search focusing on antiparticles produced by WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) annihilation and decay in the Galactic halo. In addition to the very powerful search channel provided by antideuterons (Donato et al., 2000, 2008) [1,2], (Vittino et al.) [3], (Fornengo, 2013) [4], GAPS has a strong capability to measure low-energy antiprotons (0.07⩽E⩽0.07⩽E⩽0.25 GeV) as dark matter signatures. This is an especially effective means for probing light dark matter, whose existence has been hinted at in the direct dark matter searches, including the recent result from the CDMS-II experiment (Agnese, 2013) [5]. While severely constrained by LUX and other direct dark matter searches (Akerib et al.) [6], light dark matter candidates are still viable in an isospin-violating dark matter scenario and halo-independent analysis (Del Nobile et al.) [7,8]. Along with the excellent antideuteron sensitivity, GAPS will be able to detect an order of magnitude more low-energy antiprotons, compared to BESS (Abe et al., 2012) [9], (Orito et al., 2000) [10], PAMELA (Adriani et al., 2010) [11] and AMS-02 (Casaus, 2009) [12], providing a precision measurement of low-energy antiproton flux and a unique channel for probing light dark matter models. Additionally, dark matter signatures from gravitinos and Kaluza–Klein right-handed neutrinos as well as evidence of primordial black hole evaporation can be observed through low-energy antiproton search.