Magnetic Enhancement of Electron-Positron Production with Neutralinos

The purpose of this research is to determine if electron-positron pairs radiating away from dark matter in the presence of strong magnetic fields could produce a dark matter detection signature. The dark matter candidate used in this research is the lightest neutralino predicted by the minimally supersymmetric extension to the Standard Model. Dark matter is thought to cluster in the dense cores of stars, where some of the strongest magnetic fields in the universe exist, and previous work has shown that these fields are capable of facilitating processes that are otherwise kinematically forbidden. The neutralino-induced production rate is presented for electrons and positrons in the lowest Landau level and through channels mediated by squarks and by the Z-boson.