  We perform a detailed quantitative analysis of the recent AMS-02 electron and
positron data. We investigate the interplay between the emission from primary
astrophysical sources, namely Supernova Remnants and Pulsar Wind Nebulae, and
the contribution from a dark matter annihilation or decay signal. Our aim is to
assess the information that can be derived on dark matter properties when both
dark matter and primary astrophysical sources are assumed to jointly contribute
to the leptonic observables measured by the AMS-02 experiment. We investigate
both the possibility to set robust constraints on the dark matter
annihilation/decay rate and the possibility to look for dark matter signals
within realistic models that take into account the full complexity of the
astrophysical background. Our results show that AMS-02 data enable to probe
efficiently vast regions of the dark matter parameter space and, in some cases,
to set constraints on the dark matter annihilation/decay rate that are
comparable or even stronger than the ones derived from other indirect detection
channels.
