Pre-launch estimates for GLAST sensitivity to dark matter annihilation signals

By E. Baltz, B. Berenji, Menlo Park Kipac, G. Bertone, I. Paris, L. Bergström, U. Stockholm, E. Bloom, T. Bringmann, J. Chiang and 20 more. 2008

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the sensitivity of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) for indirectly detecting weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) through the γ-ray signal that their pair annihilation produces. WIMPs are among the favorite candidates for explaining the compelling evidence that about 80% of the mass in the Universe is non-baryonic dark matter (DM). They are serendipitously motivated by various extensions of the standard model of particle physics such as supersymmetry and universal extra dimensions (UED). With its unprecedented sensitivity and its very large energy range (20 MeV to more than 300 GeV) the main instrument on board the GLAST satellite, the Large Area Telescope (LAT), will open a new window of discovery. As our estimates show, the LAT will be able to detect an indirect DM signature for a large class of WIMP models given a cuspy profile for the DM distribution. Using the current state of the art Monte Carlo and event reconstruction software developed within the LAT collaboration, we present preliminary sensitivity studies for several possible sources inside and outside the Galaxy. We also discuss the potential of the LAT to detect UED via the electron/positron channel. Diffuse background modeling and other background issues that will be important in setting limits or seeing a signal are presented.

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d9a71092f4ca9fb6973c5df148899d33c84b2d8

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Citations in the corpus

Farthest Neighbor: The Distant Milky Way Satellite Eridanus II (2016, background): “They can provide strong tests of models where dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that selfannihilate to produce gamma rays (Gunn et al. 1978; Bergström & Snellman 1988; Baltz et al. 2008).”
SEARCH FOR GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM DES DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY CANDIDATES WITH FERMI-LAT DATA (2015, background): “Gamma rays are one product of WIMP annihilations (Baltz et al. 2008; Bringmann & Weniger 2012); they may be produced directly or in a shower of secondary particles.”
Pulsars as the sources of high energy cosmic ray positrons (2008, background): “In either case, such scenarios are somewhat constrained by observations of gamma-rays [14], antiprotons [9, 12] and synchrotron emission [12, 15].”
SEARCHING FOR DARK MATTER ANNIHILATION IN RECENTLY DISCOVERED MILKY WAY SATELLITES WITH FERMI-LAT (2016, background): “…satellite galaxies (dSphs) are excellent targets to search for γ rays produced from DM annihilation due to their proximity, their large DM density, and the absence of observational evidence for non-thermal astrophysical processes that produce γ rays (e.g., Evans et al. 2004; Baltz et al. 2008).”
Search for gamma-ray spectral lines with the Fermi Large Area Telescope and dark matter implications (2013, unknown): “6: Depiction of WIMP annihilation via a model-dependent process into W, Z, or quark pairs that hadronize creating secondary γ rays, neutrinos, electrons, and antimatter [22]”
THE LARGE AREA TELESCOPE ON THE FERMI GAMMA-RAY SPACE TELESCOPE MISSION (2009, background): “Detailed calculations of LAT sensitivities to Dark Matter are described in a separate paper (Baltz et al. 2008).”
A Tentative Gamma-Ray Line from Dark Matter Annihilation at the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2012, unknown): “rge Area Telescope (LAT), which is the main instrument on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope [41], measures the gamma-ray sky with an unprecedented precision, searching—amongst others—for DM signals [42]. Previous searches for spectral signatures from DM annihilation [43–47] were exclusively concen”
Non-abelian dark sectors and their collider signatures (2009, unknown): “A second difficulty is the non-observation of corresponding excesses in anti-protons [4] and gamma rays [9], which puts strong bounds on hadronic channels that are present in many dark matter models.”
SEARCH FOR DARK MATTER SATELLITES USING FERMI-LAT (2012, unknown): “The continuum I-ray emission from WIMP annihilation has two different contributions: secondary photons from tree-level annihilation (Baltz et al. 2008; Cesarini et al. 2004) and additional photons from QED corrections - i.e., final state radiation (FSR) (Beacom et al. 2005).”
The Aquarius Project: the subhaloes of galactic haloes (2008, methodology): “It should not be used when modelling the cold dark matter annihilation signal, as in a number of recent papers (e.g. Baltz et al., 2008).”
Dark matter and pulsar model constraints from Galactic Center Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations (2013, methodology): “[28] E.”