Limits on dark matter annihilation signals from the Fermi LAT 4-year measurement of the isotropic gamma-ray background

By The Fermi-LAT Collaboration, M. Ackermann, M. Ajello, A. Albert, L. Baldini, G. Barbiellini, D. Bastieri, K. Bechtol, R. Bellazzini, E. Bissaldi and 103 more. 2015

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We search for evidence of dark matter (DM) annihilation in the isotropic gamma-ray background (IGRB) measured with 50 months of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations. An improved theoretical description of the cosmological DM annihilation signal, based on two complementary techniques and assuming generic weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) properties, renders more precise predictions compared to previous work. More specifically, we estimate the cosmologically-induced gamma-ray intensity to have an uncertainty of a factor ~ 20 in canonical setups. We consistently include both the Galactic and extragalactic signals under the same theoretical framework, and study the impact of the former on the IGRB spectrum derivation. We find no evidence for a DM signal and we set limits on the DM-induced isotropic gamma-ray signal. Our limits are competitive for DM particle masses up to tens of TeV and, indeed, are the strongest limits derived from Fermi LAT data at TeV energies. This is possible thanks to the new Fermi LAT IGRB measurement, which now extends up to an energy of 820 GeV. As a result, we quantify uncertainties in detail and show the potential this type of search offers for testing the WIMP paradigm with a complementary and truly cosmological probe ofmore » DM particle signals.« less

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/478a3c69e3154d18a51974e1a378758fc7be1028

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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. J. Gaskins
2. M. Meyer
3. M. D. Mauro
4. M. Ajello
5. S. Digel
6. G. Zaharijas
7. J. Biteau
8. David A. Williams

Citations in the corpus

• Sensitivity projections for dark matter searches with the Fermi large area telescope (2016, background): “Currently, the dominant uncertainties in the derivation of DM limits from the IGRB energy spectrum are from the large uncertainties associated with the modeling of the Galactic foregrounds [111].”