DarkSUSY 6 : An Advanced Tool to Compute Dark Matter Properties
  Numerically
  The nature of dark matter remains one of the key science questions. Weakly
Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the best motivated particle
physics candidates, allowing to explain the measured dark matter density by
employing standard big-bang thermodynamics. We introduce here a radically new
version of the widely used DarkSUSY package, which allows to compute the
properties of such dark matter particles numerically. With DarkSUSY 6 one can
accurately predict a large variety of astrophysical signals from dark matter,
such as direct detection rates in low-background counting experiments and
indirect detection signals through antiprotons, antideuterons, gamma rays and
positrons from the Galactic halo, or high-energy neutrinos from the center of
the Earth or of the Sun. For thermally produced dark matter like WIMPs,
high-precision tools are provided for the computation of the relic density in
the Universe today, as well as for the size of the smallest dark matter
protohalos. Furthermore, the code allows to calculate dark matter
self-interaction rates, which may affect the distribution of dark matter at
small cosmological scales. Compared to earlier versions, DarkSUSY 6 introduces
many significant physics improvements and extensions. The most fundamental new
feature of this release, however, is that the code has been completely
re-organized and brought into a highly modular and flexible shape. Switching
between different pre-implemented dark matter candidates has thus become
straight-forward, just as adding new - WIMP or non-WIMP - particle models or
replacing any given functionality in a fully user-specified way. In this
article, we describe the physics behind the computer package, along with the
main structure and philosophy of this major revision of DarkSUSY. A detailed
manual is provided together with the public release at www.darksusy.org.
