Dark matter constraints from observations of 25 Milky Way satellite galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

By M. Ackermann, A. Albert, B. Anderson, L. Baldini, J. Ballet, G. Barbiellini, D. Bastieri, K. Bechtol, R. Bellazzini, E. Bissaldi and 111 more. 2013

443 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are some of the most dark-matter-dominated objects known. Due to their proximity, high dark matter content, and lack of astrophysical backgrounds, dwarf spheroidal galaxies are widely considered to be among the most promising targets for the indirect detection of dark matter via γ rays. Here we report on γ-ray observations of 25 Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies based on 4 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data. None of the dwarf galaxies are significantly detected in γ rays, and we present γ-ray flux upper limits between 500 MeV and 500 GeV. We determine the dark matter content of 18 dwarf spheroidal galaxies from stellar kinematic data and combine LAT observations of 15 dwarf galaxies to constrain the dark matter annihilation cross section. We set some of the tightest constraints to date on the annihilation of dark matter particles with masses between 2 GeV and 10 TeV into prototypical standard model channels. We find these results to be robust against systematic uncertainties in the LAT instrument performance, diffuse γ-ray background modeling, and assumed dark matter density profile. © 2014 American Physical Society.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fa1db8f94128abaa460cec1501fb99c1ff7f155d

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Citations in the corpus

The effects of QCD equation of state on the relic density of WIMP dark matter (2015, background): “Successful WIMP candidates must therefore not only satisfy the relic abundance constraint, but also constraints coming from direct [15–17] and indirect [18–22] detection experiments.”
EIGHT NEW MILKY WAY COMPANIONS DISCOVERED IN FIRST-YEAR DARK ENERGY SURVEY DATA (2015, background): “6−5403, at ~30 kpc, suggests that it may be an interesting target for indirect dark matter searches using gamma-ray telescopes (e.g., Ackermann et al. 2014).”
Optimized dark matter searches in deep observations of Segue 1 with MAGIC (2013, methodology): “1 Secondary photons from final state Standard Model particles Annihilation Figure 13 shows our 〈σannv〉 upper limits from DM annihilation into the bb̄, μμ, ττ and WW channels(3), compared with the corresponding constraints from i) joint analysis of 4 years of observations of 15 dSphs by Fermi -LAT [2”
THE ORIGIN OF THE EXTRAGALACTIC GAMMA-RAY BACKGROUND AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DARK MATTER ANNIHILATION (2015, methodology): “Overall, our limits are 2-3 times more constraining than the conservative ones in Ackermann et al. (2014c) thanks to the refined knowledge of the integrated emission from point-like sources derived here.”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “Indirect detection searches for dark matter annihilation or decay in the Universe today can improve signal over background by targeting high-density regions — be it the Galactic Center [441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456], satellite galaxies [457, 458, 459”
Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector (2015, unknown): “Results from gamma-ray telescopes [126,127] are also shown, along with the thermal relic density annihilation rate [26,27]”
Limits to dark matter annihilation cross-section from a combined analysis of MAGIC and Fermi-LAT observations of dwarf satellite galaxies (2016, methodology): “vi<0, and it is aggravated when h˙vi 2:71 <0. One possible prescription to deal with these cases is to restrict 2ln P(h˙vijD) to h˙vi0 [56]. This is the solution adopted by Fermi-LAT in Refs. [33,34], and the one we have followed in this work. Another, more conservative (i.e. producing larger ”
SEARCH FOR GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM DES DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY CANDIDATES WITH FERMI-LAT DATA (2015, methodology): “5 for Boötes I, Canes Venatici I, Canes Venatici II, Coma Berenices, Hercules, Leo IV, Segue 1, Ursa Major I, Ursa Major II, and Willman 1 (see Table 1 in Ackermann et al. 2014).”
Dark matter annihilations and decays after the AMS-02 positron measurements (2013, background): “background (which are strongly correlated to the positron limits since both the gamma-ray and the positron uxes have the same source term), as well as the limits on the cross section reported in Ref. [52] from a combined analysis of 25 Milky Way satellite galaxies and the limits on the lifetime in R”