Dr. Martin Vollmann

After several decades of intense experimental effort to find them, Dark Matter (DM) in form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), e.g. SUSY Neutralinos, remain elusive and much of the attention has shifted to alternative candidates in the past several years. There still remain, nevertheless, large unexplored parameter regions inaccessible by direct (collider) detection experiments. Indirect detection using current and next-generation air Cherenkov telescopes offers a promising avenue to test such otherwise undetectable DM hypotheses. For instance, these telescopes can be used to search above-TeV scale neutralinos, which are ubiquitous in e.g. (mini)split SUSY scenarios.

The theoretical aspects are, however, quite challenging. Indeed, the several-TeV (DM mass) to a few hundred GeV (electroweak symmetry breaking scale) hierarchy that is present in these models induces non-negligible quantum effects that are not accounted-for in fixed-order computations. The most prominent one is the so-called Sommerfeld effect, which can give rise to huge enhancements of several orders of magnitude to the predicted gamma-ray spectra. In order to treat this effect properly, potential non-relativistic effective field theory (pNREFT) methods are required. 

In this talk I will mostly focus on the application of these methods and their numerical impact in the context of (mainly) the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). The talk is based on arXiv:[2310.11067].