RT Journal Article
T1 Unidentified gamma-ray sources as targets for indirect dark matter detection with the Fermi-Large Area Telescope
A1 Coronado Blázquez, Javier
A1 Sánchez Conde, Miguel
A1 Domínguez Díaz, Alberto
A1 Aguirre Santaella, Alejandra
A1 Di Mauro, Mattia
A1 Mirabal, Néstor
A1 Nieto Castaño, Daniel
A1 Charles, Eric
AB One of the predictions of the ΛCDM cosmological framework is the hierarchical formation of structure, giving rise to dark matter (DM) halos and subhalos. When the latter are massive enough they retain gas (i.e., baryons) and become visible. This is the case of the dwarf satellite galaxies in the Milky Way (MW). Below a certain mass, halos may not accumulate significant amounts of baryons and remain completely dark. However, if DM particles are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), we expect them to annihilate in subhalos, producing gamma rays which can be detected with the Fermi satellite. Using the three most recent point-source Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) catalogs (3FGL, 2FHL and 3FHL), we search for DM subhalo candidates among the unidentified sources, i.e., sources with no firm association to a known astrophysical object. We apply several selection criterio based on the expected properties of the DM-induced emission from subhalos, which allow us to significantly reduce the list of potential candidates. Then, by characterizing the mínimum detection flux of the instrument and comparing our sample to predictions from the Via Lactea II (VL-II) N-body cosmological simulation, we place conservative and robust constraints on the hσvi – m_(DM) parameter space. For annihilation via the τ ^(+)τ^(−) channel, we put an upper limit of 4 × 10^(26) (5 × 10^(25)) cm^(3)s^(−1) for a mass of 10 (100) GeV. A critical improvement over previous treatments is the repopulation we made to include low-mass subhalos below the VL-II mass resolution. With more advanced subhalo candidate filtering the sensitivity reach of our method can potentially improve these constraints by a factor 3 (2) for τ^( +)τ^(−) (b ̄b) channel.
PB IOP Publishing
SN 1475-7516
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/88571
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/88571
LA eng
NO J. Coronado-Blázquez, M. A. Sánchez-Conde, A. Domínguez, A. Aguirre-Santaella, M. D. Mauro, N. Mirabal, D. Nieto, and E. Charles, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2019, 020 (2019).
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NO Ministerio de Economía, Comercio y Empresa (España)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España) 
NO Department of Energy (Estados Unidos)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 17 abr 2025