Implications of High-Resolution Simulations on Indirect Dark Matter Searches

By L. Pieri, J. Lavalle, G. Bertone, E. Branchini. 2009

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the prospects for detecting the annihilation products of dark matter (DM) in the framework of the two highest-resolution numerical simulations currently available, i.e., Via Lactea II and Aquarius. We propose a strategy to determine the shape and size of the region around the Galactic center that maximizes the probability of observing a DM signal, and we show that, although the predicted flux can differ by a factor of 10 for a given DM candidate in the two simulation setups, the search strategy remains actually unchanged, since it relies on the angular profile of the annihilation flux, not on its normalization. We present mock {gamma}-ray maps that keep into account the diffuse emissions produced by unresolved halos in the Galaxy, and we show that, in an optimistic DM scenario, a few individual clumps can be resolved above the background with the Fermi-LAT. Finally, we calculate the energy-dependent boost factors for positrons and antiprotons and show that they are always of O(1), and, therefore, they cannot lead to the large enhancements of the antimatter fluxes required to explain the recent PAMELA, ATIC, Fermi, and HESS data. Still, we show that the annihilation of 100 GeV weakly interacting massive particles intomore » charged lepton pairs may contribute significantly to the positron budget.« less

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1b938f5c39e9b52249e3725aa5fa89a2d53f15b

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Citations in the corpus

Fermi LAT Search for Internal Bremsstrahlung Signatures from Dark Matter Annihilation (2012, methodology): “Further enhancements of the signal, without violating our relic density constraints, can appear due to the gravitational clustering of DM as predicted by N -body simulations [74, 85].”
A Tentative Gamma-Ray Line from Dark Matter Annihilation at the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2012, background): “4 GeV cm −3 at position of the Sun [50, 51]: (1) The Einasto profile, favored by the latest N -body simulations [52–54],”
A tale of tails: Dark matter interpretations of the Fermi GeV excess in light of background model systematics (2014, background): “To enforce consistency between the measured and gravitationally allowed signal morphologies even when dSph limits further strengthen in the future, one would have to resort to more drastic assumptions, such as a DM profile that considerably flattens within the inner 1 kpc or so, or substructure enha”
Limits on dark matter annihilation signals from the Fermi LAT 4-year measurement of the isotropic gamma-ray background (2015, background): “As far as the diffuse gamma-ray intensity from DM annihilations in the Galactic subhalo population is concerned, some earlier works [12, 69] found that it could appear isotropic in our region of interest, and we explore this issue here in more detail.”
Numerical simulations of the dark universe: State of the art and the next decade (2012, methodology): “1000 for the total luminosity of a halo [44, 60, 91, 114, 135].”
Wino dark matter under siege (2013, background): “The NFW and Einasto profiles are favored by N -body dark matter only simulations,(5) see for example [64], but there is observational evidence for shallower or cored profiles in some dwarf galaxies [65].”
Characterization of subhalo structural properties and implications for dark matter annihilation signals (2016, background): “…(Taylor & Babul 2001; Benson et al. 2002; Ullio et al. 2002; Taffoni et al. 2003; Zentner & Bullock 2003; Peñarrubia & Benson 2005; Oguri & Lee 2004; Taylor & Babul 2005b,a,b; van den Bosch et al. 2005; Zentner 2005; Kuhlen et al. 2008; Gan et al. 2010; Pieri et al. 2011; Purcell & Zentner 2012).”
Gamma Ray Signals from Dark Matter: Concepts, Status and Prospects (2012, background): “This implies that the expected boost factor for GC observations is of order unity [77, 108–110], while it may be as large as O(1000) for galaxy clusters due to the enormous contained hierarchy of masses [111–114].”
The flattening of the concentration–mass relation towards low halo masses and its implications for the annihilation signal boost (2013, background): “6 We note that, interestingly, the best fit to VL-II (subhalo) concentrations found by Pieri et al. (2011) agrees very well with Eq.”
A review of indirect searches for particle dark matter (2016, unknown): “natures of substructure became possible [50,162].”