Indirect dark matter search with diffuse gamma rays from the Galactic Center with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) remain a prime candidate for the cosmological dark matter (DM), even in the absence of current collider signals that would unambiguously point to new physics below the TeV scale. The self-annihilation of these particles in astronomical targets may leave observable imprints in cosmic rays of various kinds. In this review, we focus on gamma rays which we argue to play a pronounced role among the various possible messengers. We discuss the most promising spectral and spatial signatures to look for, give an update on the current state of gamma-ray searches for DM and an outlook concerning future prospects. We also assess in some detail the implications of a potential signal identification for particle DM models as well as for our understanding of structure formation. Special emphasis is put on the possible evidence for a 130 GeV line-like signal that we recently identified in the data of the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope.

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“…[20] (Fermi-LAT), [21][22][23] (AMS-02), [24][25][26] (GAMMA-400), [27] (MAGIC), [28] (HESS-II) and [29] (CTA).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We stress that the numbers in Tab. 1 are intended to provide a convenient order-of-magnitude comparison of instrumental characteristics; they should [20] (Fermi-LAT), [21][22][23] (AMS-02), [24][25][26] (GAMMA-400), [27] (MAGIC), [28] (HESS-II) and [29] (CTA).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gamma ray signals from dark matter: Concepts, status and prospects

Bringmann

Weniger

2012

Physics of the Dark Universe

249

286

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“…Within our Galaxy, the annihilation signal is expected to be particularly strong in the high‐density regions around the Galactic Centre (Bertone & Merritt 2005; Jacholkowska et al 2006). However, since other astrophysical sources contribute prominently to the gamma‐ray flux there, it may be difficult to disentangle a possible neutralino annihilation signal from the rest of ‘ordinary’ sources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation from dark matter annihilation

Zavala

Springel

Boylan-Kolchin

2010

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

122

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If dark matter is composed of neutralinos, one of the most exciting prospects for its detection lies in observations of the gamma‐ray radiation created in pair annihilations between neutralinos, a process that may contribute significantly to the extragalactic gamma‐ray background (EGB) radiation. We here use the high‐resolution Millennium‐II simulation of cosmic structure formation to produce the first full sky maps of the expected radiation coming from extragalactic dark matter structures. Our map‐making procedure takes into account the total gamma‐ray luminosity from all haloes and their subhaloes, and includes corrections for unresolved components of the emission as well as an extrapolation to the damping scale limit of neutralinos. Our analysis also includes a proper normalization of the signal according to a specific supersymmetric model based on minimal supergravity. The new simulated maps allow a study of the angular power spectrum of the gamma‐ray background from dark matter annihilation, which has distinctive features associated with the nature of the annihilation process and may be detectable in forthcoming observations by the recently launched Fermi satellite. Our results are in broad agreement with analytic models for the gamma‐ray background, but they also include higher order correlations not readily accessible in analytic calculations and, in addition, provide detailed spectral information for each pixel. In particular, we find that difference maps at different energies can reveal cosmic large‐scale structure at low and intermediate redshifts. If the intrinsic emission spectrum is characterized by an emission peak, cosmological tomography with gamma‐ray annihilation radiation is in principle possible.

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“…First estimates of the detectability of a dark matter pair-annihilation signal from the center of the Galaxy date back 30 years [8,9]. An incomplete list of recent references that discussed the detection of dark matter pair-annihilation in the Galactic center with gamma-ray observations includes [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,3]. In particular, ref.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fitting the gamma-ray spectrum from dark matter with DMFIT: GLAST and the galactic center region

Jeltema

Profumo

2008

J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

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We study the potential of GLAST to unveil particle dark matter properties with gamma-ray observations of the Galactic center region. We present full GLAST simulations including all gamma-ray sources known to date in a region of 4 degrees around the Galactic center, in addition to the diffuse gamma-ray background and to the dark matter signal. We introduce DMFIT, a tool that allows one to fit gamma-ray emission from pair-annihilation of generic particle dark matter models and to extract information on the mass, normalization and annihilation branching ratios into Standard Model final states. We assess the impact and systematic effects of background modeling and theoretical priors on the reconstruction of dark matter particle properties. Our detailed simulations demonstrate that for some well motivated supersymmetric dark matter setups with one year of GLAST data it will be possible not only to significantly detect a dark matter signal over background, but also to estimate the dark matter mass and its dominant pair-annihilation mode.

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Indirect dark matter search with diffuse gamma rays from the Galactic Center with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

Cited by 10 publications

References 52 publications

Gamma ray signals from dark matter: Concepts, status and prospects

Gamma ray signals from dark matter: Concepts, status and prospects

Extragalactic gamma-ray background radiation from dark matter annihilation

Fitting the gamma-ray spectrum from dark matter with DMFIT: GLAST and the galactic center region

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