The EGRET telescope has identified a gamma-ray source at the Galactic center. We point out here that the spectral features of this source are compatible with the gamma-ray flux induced by pair annihilations of dark matter weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). We show that the discrimination between this interpretation and other viable explanations will be possible with GLAST, the next major gamma-ray telescope in space, on the basis of both the spectral and the angular signature of the WIMP-induced component. If, on the other hand, the data will point to an alternative explanation, we prove that there will still be the possibility for GLAST to single out a weaker dark matter source at the Galactic center. The potential of GLAST has been explored both in the context of a generic simplified toy-model for WIMP dark matter, and in a more specific setup, the case of dark matter neutralinos in the minimal supergravity framework. In the latter, we find that even in the case of moderate dark matter densities in the Galactic center region, there are portions of the parameter space which will be probed by GLAST.
This is a study of the phenomenology of the neutralino dark matter in the so called deflected anomaly mediation scenario. This scheme is obtained from the minimal anomaly mediated scenario by introducing a gauge mediated sector with N f messenger fields. Unlike the former scheme the latter has no tachyons. We find that the neutralino is still the LSP in a wide region of the parameter space: it is essentially a pure bino in the scenario with N f = 1 while it can also be a pure higgsino for N f > 1. This is very different from the naive anomaly mediated scenario which predicts a wino like neutralino. Moreover we do not find any tachyonic scalars in this scheme. After computing the relic density (considering all the possible coannihilations) we find that there are regions in the parameter space with values compatible with the latest WMAP results with no need to consider moduli fields that decay in the early universe.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.