Voyager probing Dark Matter
Résumé
The famous spacecraft Voyager-1 has crossed the heliopause in 2012, and is now exploring the local interstellar medium. This opens up a new avenue to probe the dark matter via cosmic ray electrons and positrons in the sub-GeV energy range. We combined the constraints from the Voyager-1 and AMS-02 data to get novel and robust limits covering a very extended dark matter particle mass range, from MeV to TeV. For velocity dependent annihilation processes ($p$-wave), we make use of the Eddington method to compute the phase space distribution function of dark matter particles from the most recent constrained mass model of the Galaxy. Primordial black holes are alternative and also well-motivated candidates for the dark matter. Black holes with a mass smaller than $\sim 10^{17}$g are expected to inject electrons and positrons in the Galaxy via Hawking radiation. We show that Voyager-1 is sensitive to signatures from such black holes and we derive novel constraints on the contribution of primordial black holes to the dark matter in this mass window.