One of the main avenues to search for dark matter is to look for
astrophysical signatures from the products of annihilating
(or decaying) dark matter particles in the Milky Way. Relevant
messengers include neutral particles like photons or neutrinos,
but also charged antiparticles like positrons or antiprotons
that do not travel on straight paths and are instead deflected
by Galactic magnetic fields.
The challenge is to identify a typically subdominant signal against
an overwhelming, yet often poorly understood, astrophysical
background. In this respect, spectral signatures -- peculiarities
in the energy distribution of the particles resulting from dark matter --
can be a very valuable tool not only to discriminate a dark matter
signal against the astrophysical background, but also to gain
crucial information about the nature of the dark matter particles
themselves (like their masses and spins). These signatures typically
only becomes apparent when radiative corrections to the tree-level
annihilation rates are taken into account. The goal of this project
is to perform such calculations, and to identify new experimental
observables depending on the form of the resulting spectra.
The project requires an excellent understanding of quantum field
theory, and a very good understanding of dark matter phenomenology.
The focus is on an analytical analysis, aided by the algebraic computer
package mathematica. Programming skills may be an advantage
for the numerical evaluation of the results.