Dark Matter decay and annihilation in the Local Universe: CLUES from Fermi

Abstract

We present all-sky simulated Fermi maps of gamma-rays from dark matter decay and annihilation in the Local Universe. The dark matter distribution is obtained from a constrained cosmological simulation of the neighboring large-scale structure provided by the CLUES project. The dark matter fields of density and density squared are then taken as an input for the Fermi observation simulation tool to predict the gamma-ray photon counts that Fermi would detect in 5 years of all-sky survey for given dark matter models. Signal-to-noise sky maps have also been obtained by adopting the current Galactic and isotropic diffuse background models released by the Fermi collaboration. We point out the possibility for Fermi to detect a dark matter gamma-ray signal in local extragalactic structures. In particular, we conclude here that Fermi observations of nearby clusters (e.g. Virgo and Coma) and filaments are expected to give stronger constraints on decaying dark matter compared to previous studies. As an example, we find a significant signal-to-noise ratio in dark matter models with a decay rate fitting the positron excess as measured by PAMELA. This is the first time that dark matter filaments are shown to be promising targets for indirect detection of dark matter. On the other hand, the prospects for detectability of annihilating dark matter in local extragalactic structures are less optimistic even with extreme cross-sections. We make the dark matter density and density squared maps available online at http://www.clues-project.org/articles/darkmattermaps.html

7 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Matches version published in ApJ Letters. High-resolution version of Figure 1 together with FITS files of the dark matter density and density squared maps at: http://www.clues-project.org/articles/darkmattermaps.html ; Version 3 includes 1-page ApJL Erratum: S/N values corrected, conclusions now point to a better detectability of Virgo and Coma in gamma-rays

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• Indirect Searches for Decaying Dark Matter
• 3D Velocity and Density Reconstructions of the Local Universe with Cosmicflows-1
• Constraining Cosmic Rays and Magnetic Fields in the Perseus Galaxy Cluster with TeV observations by the MAGIC telescopes
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• Dark Matter in the Local Universe
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• CLUES on Fermi-LAT prospects for the extragalactic detection of munuSSM gravitino Dark Matter
• Reconstructing cosmological initial conditions from galaxy peculiar velocities. III. Constrained simulations
• Reconstructing cosmological initial conditions from galaxy peculiar velocities. II. The effect of observational errors
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