Distinguishing dark matter from unresolved point sources in the Inner Galaxy with photon statistics

Lee, Samuel K.; Lisanti, Mariangela; Safdi, Benjamin R.

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2015/05/056

Cited by 77 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 145 publications

(289 reference statements)

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“…We follow the procedure outlined in the literature [35,[50][51][52] to calculate the photon-count probability distribution in each pixel for the combined template model as 8 To facilitate comparison with the previous work of [35], for the NPTF analysis we use a GCE template constructed from an NFW with γ =1.25, which is the value used in that reference. We find changing this to 1.14 has a much smaller impact than the other sources of uncertainties in our analysis.…”

Section: B Inner Galaxy -Non-poissonian Template Fittingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous studies have cast doubt on this interpretation by a comparison of the luminosity distribution of γ-ray pulsars observed in the Galactic plane with the lack of individually detected γ-ray pulsars near the Galactic center [44,45,68,69] (see, however, [30,31,33,34,37] for alternative arguments). On the other hand, recent studies of the fluctuations in the γ-ray data have found significant "hotspots" consistent with a population of sub-threshold point sources, potentially indicative of a significant pulsar contribution [36,51]. While significant work remains in assessing the fit of pulsar models to the Galactic center data, it is worth investigating the emission from such a pulsar population at high γ-ray energies.…”

Section: Fig 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…II we describe the analysis framework we employ to study the γ-ray excess in the GC and Inner Galaxy (IG), using both Poissonian and non-Poissonian template fitting. The latter method (based on [35,[50][51][52]) can be used to account for populations of unresolved PSs. In Sec.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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High-energy tail of the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess

et al. 2016

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Observations by the Fermi-LAT have uncovered a bright, spherically symmetric excess surrounding the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The spectrum of the γ-ray excess peaks sharply at an energy ∼ 2 GeV, exhibiting a hard spectrum at lower energies, and falls off quickly above an energy ∼ 5 GeV. The spectrum of the excess above ∼ 10 GeV is potentially an important discriminator between different physical models for its origin. We focus our study on observations of the γ-ray excess at energies exceeding 10 GeV, finding: (1) a statistically significant excess remains in the energy range 9.5 − 47.5 GeV, which is not degenerate with known diffuse emission templates such as the Fermi Bubbles, (2) the radial profile of the excess at high energies remains relatively consistent with data near the spectral peak (3) the data above ∼ 5 GeV prefer a slightly greater ellipticity with a major axis oriented perpendicular to the Galactic plane. Using the recently developed nonPoissonian template fit, we find mild evidence for a point-source origin for the high-energy excess, although given the statistical and systematic uncertainties we show that a smooth origin of the high-energy emission cannot be ruled out. We discuss the implication of these findings for pulsar and dark matter models of the γ-ray excess. Finally we provide a number of updated measurements of the γ-ray excess, utilizing novel diffuse templates and the Pass 8 dataset.PACS numbers: 95.85.Pw, 98.70.Rz; MIT-CTP/4796

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Section: B Inner Galaxy -Non-poissonian Template Fittingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fig 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

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High-energy tail of the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess

et al. 2016

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“…As a result, it remains unclear whether this signal arises from DM annihilation rather than from a currently unknown contribution from astrophysics such as a large population of milli-second pulsars, cosmic-ray (CR) proton or electron outbursts, additional cosmic ray sources, and/or emission from a stellar over-density in the Galactic bulge [11,16,[18][19][20][21][22][23]. An interesting development is the use of statistical tools which indicate that GeV photons from the direction of the inner galaxy region show significantly more clustering than would be expected from Poisson noise from smooth components [24][25][26][27]. However, it remains difficult with the current models to disentangle whether this feature represents a property of the excess itself, or unmodelled variation in the background components [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dark matter interpretation of the Fermi -LAT observation toward the Galactic Center

et al. 2017

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The center of the Milky Way is predicted to be the brightest region of γ-rays generated by selfannihilating dark matter particles. Excess emission about the Galactic center above predictions made for standard astrophysical processes has been observed in γ-ray data collected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. It is well described by the square of an NFW dark matter density distribution. Although other interpretations for the excess are plausible, the possibility that it arises from annihilating dark matter is valid. In this paper, we characterize the excess emission as annihilating dark matter in the framework of an effective field theory. We consider the possibility that the annihilation process is mediated by either pseudo-scalar or vector interactions and constrain the coupling strength of these interactions by fitting to the Fermi Large Area Telescope data for energies 1-100 GeV in the 15 • × 15 • region about the Galactic center using self-consistently derived interstellar emission models and point source lists for the region. The excess persists and its spectral characteristics favor a dark matter particle with a mass in the range approximately from 50 to 190 (10 to 90) GeV and annihilation cross section approximately from 1×10 −26 to 4×10 −25 (6×10 −27 to 2×10 −25 ) cm 3 /s for pseudo-scalar (vector) interactions. We map these intervals into the corresponding WIMP-neutron scattering cross sections and find that the allowed range lies well below current and projected direct detection constraints for pseudo-scalar interactions, but are typically ruled out for vector interactions.

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“…the past activity of the supermassive black hole lying in the center of the galaxy [67,68]. On the other hand, dwarf spheroidal galaxies are considered as very interesting targets to look for a dark matter signal.…”

Section: Jhep11(2017)132mentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness of dark matter constraints and interplay with collider searches for New Physics

Arbey

Robbins

Mahmoudi

et al. 2017

J. High Energ. Phys.

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Abstract:We study the implications of dark matter searches, together with collider constraints, on the phenomenological MSSM with neutralino dark matter and focus on the consequences of the related uncertainties in some detail. We consider, inter alia, the latest results from AMS-02, Fermi-LAT and XENON1T. In particular, we examine the impact of the choice of the dark matter halo profile, as well as the propagation model for cosmic rays, for dark matter indirect detection and show that the constraints on the MSSM differ by one to two orders of magnitude depending on the astrophysical hypotheses. On the other hand, our limited knowledge of the local relic density in the vicinity of the Earth and the velocity of Earth in the dark matter halo leads to a factor 3 in the exclusion limits obtained by direct detection experiments. We identified the astrophysical models leading to the most conservative and the most stringent constraints and for each case studied the complementarities with the latest LHC measurements and limits from Higgs, SUSY and monojet searches. We show that combining all data from dark matter searches and colliders, a large fraction of our supersymmetric sample could be probed. Whereas the direct detection constraints are rather robust under the astrophysical assumptions, the uncertainties related to indirect detection can have an important impact on the number of the excluded points.

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Distinguishing dark matter from unresolved point sources in the Inner Galaxy with photon statistics

Cited by 77 publications

References 145 publications

High-energy tail of the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess

High-energy tail of the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess

Dark matter interpretation of the Fermi -LAT observation toward the Galactic Center

Robustness of dark matter constraints and interplay with collider searches for New Physics

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