Prospects For Detecting Dark Matter With GLAST In Light Of The WMAP Haze

Abstract

Observations by the WMAP experiment have identified an excess of microwave emission from the center of the Milky Way. It has previously been shown that this "WMAP Haze" could be synchrotron emission from relativistic electrons and positrons produced in the annihilations of dark matter particles. In particular, the intensity, spectrum and angular distribution of the WMAP Haze is consistent with an electroweak scale dark matter particle (such as a supersymmetric neutralino or Kaluza-Klein dark matter in models with universal extra dimensions) annihilating with a cross section on the order of sigma v~3x10^-26 cm^3/s and distributed with a cusped halo profile. No further exotic astrophysical or annihilation boost factors are required. If dark matter annihilations are in fact responsible for the observed Haze, then other annihilation products will also be produced, including gamma rays. In this article, we study the prospects for the GLAST satellite to detect gamma rays from dark matter annihilations in the Galactic Center region in this scenario. We find that by studying only the inner 0.1 degrees around the Galactic Center, GLAST will be able to detect dark matter annihilating to heavy quarks or gauge bosons over astrophysical backgrounds with 5sigma (3sigma) significance if they are lighter than approximately 320-500 GeV (500-750 GeV). If the angular window is broadened to study the dark matter halo profile's angular extension (while simultaneously reducing the astrophysical backgrounds), WIMPs as heavy as several TeV can be identified by GLAST with high significance. Only if the dark matter particles annihilate mostly to electrons or muons will GLAST be unable to identify the gamma ray spectrum associated with the WMAP Haze.

10 pages, 6 figures

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• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
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• Evidence Of Dark Matter Annihilations In The WMAP Haze
• TeV gamma-rays and the largest masses and annihilation cross sections of neutralino dark matter
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• Challenges in Detecting Gamma-Rays From Dark Matter Annihilations in the Galactic Center
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• Extracting the Gamma Ray Signal from Dark Matter Annihilation in the Galactic Center Region
• Searching for Dark Matter with X-ray Observations of Local Dwarf Galaxies
• TASI 2008 Lectures on Dark Matter
• Search for Dark Matter
• Toward a Minimum Branching Fraction for Dark Matter Annihilation into Electromagnetic Final States
• Bounds on abundance of primordial black hole and dark matter from EDGES 21-cm signal
• The mysterious diffuse UV radiation and Axion Quark Nugget dark matter model
• A celestial gamma-ray foreground due to the albedo of small solar system bodies and a remote probe of the interstellar cosmic ray spectrum
• Exploring multimessenger signals from heavy dark matter decay with EDGES 21-cm result and IceCube
• Global 21-cm brightness temperature in viscous dark energy models
• Thermal and annihilation radiation in the quark nugget model of dark matter