A realistic assessment of the CTA sensitivity to dark matter annihilation

Abstract

Abstract. We estimate the sensitivity of the upcoming CTA gamma-ray observatory to DM annihilation at the Galactic centre, improving on previous analyses in a number of significant ways. First, we perform a detailed analyses of all backgrounds, including diffuse astrophysical emission for the first time in a study of this type. Second, we present a statistical framework for including systematic errors and estimate the consequent degradation in sensitivity. These errors may come from e.g. event reconstruction, Monte Carlo determination of the effective area or uncertainty in atmospheric conditions. Third, we show that performing the analysis on a set of suitably optimised regions of interest makes it possible to partially compensate for the degradation in sensitivity caused by systematics and diffuse emission. To probe dark matter with the canonical thermal annihilation cross-section, CTA systematics like non-uniform variations in acceptance over a single field of view must be kept below the 0.3% level, unless the dark matter density rises more steeply in the centre of the Galaxy than predicted by a typical Navarro-Frenk-White or Einasto profile. For a contracted r −1.3 profile, and systematics at the 1% level, CTA can probe annihilation to bb at the canonical thermal level for dark matter masses between 100 GeV and 10 TeV.

Measurement of beauty and charm production in deep inelastic scattering at HERA and measurement of the beauty-quark mass

“…8 However, it has been claimed that a proper accounting of systematic uncertainties and of diffuse emission might make the task more difficult than foreseen [84].…”

Singlet-Doublet model: dark matter searches and LHC constraints

“…In the summary plots of figures 1-3 we have also shown the prospects for χχ → W W from the CTA experiment, as estimated in [30]. It is interesting to note that the improvement is only marginal and in some regions of the parameter space (e.g.…”

“…In our analysis, we use recent results by the Fermi-LAT [26], PICO [27], IceCube [28] and LUX [29] collaborations, including prospects for the CTA experiment [30]. Before we move on with the results, we briefly report a few details about these searches, starting from searches for gamma rays.…”

“…The red region is excluded by Fermi-LAT limit [26] on σv W W . The prospective exclusion by CTA (from [30]) is denoted by the dashed grey line. The excluded regions are drawn under the assumption that Ω χ matches the observed value (see text for details).…”

Indirect and direct detection prospect for TeV dark matter in the nine parameter MSSM

“…[13][14][15]. We will discuss prospects for future indirect and direct detection experiments, most notably for CTA that will have an excellent sensitivity for gamma rays above 100 GeV [40][41][42][43][44].…”