Constraints on the Galactic Halo Dark Matter from Fermi-LAT Diffuse Measurements

Abstract

We have performed an analysis of the diffuse gamma-ray emission with the Fermi Large Area Telescope in the Milky Way Halo region searching for a signal from dark matter annihilation or decay. In the absence of a robust dark matter signal, constraints are presented. We consider both gamma rays produced directly in the dark matter annihilation/decay and produced by inverse Compton scattering of the e+e- produced in the annihilation/decay. Conservative limits are derived requiring that the dark matter signal does not exceed the observed diffuse gamma-ray emission. A second set of more stringent limits is derived based on modeling the foreground astrophysical diffuse emission using the GALPROP code. Uncertainties in the height of the diffusive cosmic-ray halo, the distribution of the cosmic-ray sources in the Galaxy, the index of the injection cosmic-ray electron spectrum and the column density of the interstellar gas are taken into account using a profile likelihood formalism, while the parameters governing the cosmic-ray propagation have been derived from fits to local cosmic-ray data. The resulting limits impact the range of particle masses over which dark matter thermal production in the early Universe is possible, and challenge the interpretation of the PAMELA/Fermi-LAT cosmic ray anomalies as annihilation of dark matter.

23 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Contact authors: Jan Conrad, Alessandro Cuoco, Zhaoyu Yang, Gabrijela Zaharijas; v2: matches version published on ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Constraining Extended Gamma-ray Emission from Galaxy Clusters
• A new look at the cosmic ray positron fraction
• Testing the millisecond pulsar scenario of the Galactic center gamma-ray excess with very high energy gamma-rays
• Galaxy Clusters as Reservoirs of Heavy Dark Matter and High-Energy Cosmic Rays: Constraints from Neutrino Observations
• Strong Optimized Conservative Fermi-LAT Constraints on Dark Matter Models from the Inclusive Photon Spectrum
• Axino dark matter with R-parity violation and 130 GeV gamma-ray line
• AMS02 positron excess from decaying fermion DM with local dark gauge symmetry
• Probing the coupling of heavy dark matter to nucleons by detecting neutrino signature from the Earth's core
• Glow in the Dark Matter: Observing galactic halos with scattered light