Double Gamma-ray Lines from Unassociated Fermi-LAT Sources

Abstract

Gamma ray emission from dark matter subhalos in the Milky Way has long been sought as a sign of dark matter particle annihilation. So far, searches for gamma-ray continuum from subhalos have been unsuccessful, and line searches are difficult without prior knowledge of the line energies. Guided by recent claims of line emission at 111 GeV and 129 GeV in the Galactic center, we examine the co-added gamma-ray spectrum of unassociated point sources in the Second Fermi-LAT catalog (2FGL) using 3.9 years of LAT data. Using the SOURCE event class, we find evidence for lines at 111 GeV and 129 GeV with a local significance of 3.3 sigma based on a conservative estimate of the background at E>135 GeV. Other 2FGL sources analyzed in the same way do not show line emission at 111 GeV and 129 GeV. The line-emitting sources are mostly within 30 degrees of the Galactic plane, although this anisotropy may be a selection effect. If the double-line emission from these objects is confirmed with future data, it will provide compelling support for the hypothesis that the Galactic center line signal is indeed from dark matter annihilation.

12 pages, 12 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (2)

• Particle Dark Matter: Evidence, Candidates and Constraints
• Non-Baryonic Dark Matter - Observational Evidence and Detection Methods

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• Gamma Lines without a Continuum: Thermal Models for the Fermi-LAT 130 GeV Gamma Line
• Probing Charged Matter Through Higgs Diphoton Decay, Gamma Ray Lines, and EDMs
• Constraining the Galactic potential via action-based distribution functions for mono-abundance stellar populations
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• Right Sneutrino Dark Matter and a Monochromatic Photon Line
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