SEARCH FOR DARK MATTER SATELLITES USING FERMI-LAT

By T. A. C. M. Ackermann, A. Albert, L. Baldini, J. Ballet, G. Barbiellini, D. Bastieri, K. Bechtol, R. Bellazzini, R. Blandford, E. Bloom and 125 more. 2012

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Numerical simulations based on the ΛCDM model of cosmology predict a large number of as yet unobserved Galactic dark matter satellites. We report the results of a Large Area Telescope (LAT) search for these satellites via the γ-ray emission expected from the annihilation of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. Some dark matter satellites are expected to have hard γ-ray spectra, finite angular extents, and a lack of counterparts at other wavelengths. We sought to identify LAT sources with these characteristics, focusing on γ-ray spectra consistent with WIMP annihilation through the channel. We found no viable dark matter satellite candidates using one year of data, and we present a framework for interpreting this result in the context of numerical simulations to constrain the velocity-averaged annihilation cross section for a conventional 100 GeV WIMP annihilating through the channel.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d3a9b5a4fc7b745602ff06d4345cde61629029d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Pawan Kumar
3. E. Orlando
4. F. Ryde
5. Y. Inoue
6. Anna Franckowiak
7. N. Gehrels
8. Christoph Weniger

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Anna Franckowiak
3. E. Orlando
4. Christoph Weniger
5. J. Biteau
6. Y. Inoue
7. Pawan Kumar
8. J. Gaskins

Citations in the corpus

• The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “In the high energy regime, Fermi/LAT observations so far suggest that most GRBs do not have significant emission beyond 100 MeV (e.g. Beniamini et al., 2011; Ackermann et al., 2012).”
• The Search for Spatial Extension in High-latitude Sources Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2018, background): “Searches performed on the unassociated 3FGL sources have yielded upper limits(Buckley & Hooper 2010; Ackermann et al. 2012) or are inconclusive(Mirabal et al. 2012).”
• Sensitivity projections for dark matter searches with the Fermi large area telescope (2016, background): “Lower panel: as above, but including also the emission from star-forming galaxies (gray band; Ackermann et al. 2012b) and radio galaxies (black striped band; Inoue 2011) as well as the sum of all non-exotic components (yellow band).”
• THE FERMI GBM GAMMA-RAY BURST SPECTRAL CATALOG: FOUR YEARS OF DATA (2014, background): “…GBM offers great capabilities to observe all kinds of high-energy astrophysical phenomena, such as, e.g., solar flares (e.g., Gruber et al. 2011b; Ackermann et al. 2012a), soft gamma repeaters (e.g., Lin et al. 2011; von Kienlin et al. 2012) and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (e.g., Briggs et al.…”
• THE FIRST FERMI-LAT GAMMA-RAY BURST CATALOG (2013, background): “From this time until 2011 August, when a new event analysis (“Pass 7”; Ackermann et al. 2012a) was introduced, the GBM detected about 730 GRBs, approximately half of which occurred inside the LAT FoV.”
• Characterization of subhalo structural properties and implications for dark matter annihilation signals (2016, background): “…& Olinto 2002; Koushiappas et al. 2004; Diemand et al. 005b; Baltz et al. 2007; Pieri et al. 2008; Kuhlen et al. 2008; Buckley & Hooper 2010; Belikov et al. 2012; Ackermann et al. 2012; Mirabal et al. 2012; Zechlin & Horns 2012; Berlin & Hooper 2014; Bertoni et al. 2015; Schoonenberg et al. 2016).”
• Gamma Ray Signals from Dark Matter: Concepts, Status and Prospects (2012, result): “and, it was predicted that Fermi should have seen up to a few subhalos [109, 136] and the non-observation places a limit on the annihilation cross section comparable to the one obtained from the IGRB [269]. More detailed future studies in this direction would thus certainly be both very interesting ”