Search for dark matter annihilation in the dwarf irregular galaxy WLM with H.E.S.S

Abstract

We search for an indirect signal of dark matter through very high-energy gamma rays from the Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte (WLM) dwarf irregular galaxy. The pair annihilation of dark matter particles would produce Standard Model particles in the final state such as gamma rays, which might be detected by ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. Dwarf irregular galaxies represent promising targets as they are dark matter dominated objects with well measured kinematics and small uncertainties on their dark matter distribution profiles. In 2018, the H.E.S.S. five-telescope array observed the dwarf irregular galaxy WLM for 18 hours. We present the first analysis based on data obtained from an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope for this subclass of dwarf galaxy. As we do not observe any significant excess in the direction of WLM, we interpret the result in terms of constraints on the velocity-weighted cross section for dark matter pair annihilation as a function of the dark matter particle mass for various continuum channels as well as the prompt gamma-gamma emission. For the ${\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ channel the limits reach a $⟨\sigma v⟩$ value of about $4\times 10^{-22}$ cm3s-1 for a dark matter particle mass of 1 TeV. For the prompt gamma-gamma channel, the upper limit reaches a $⟨\sigma v⟩$ value of about $5\times 10^{-24}$ cm3s-1 for a mass of 370 GeV. These limits represent an improvement of up to a factor 200 with respect to previous results for the dwarf irregular galaxies for TeV dark matter search.

arXiv comment13 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (37)

• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics
• A Unified Approach to the Classical Statistical Analysis of Small Signals
• The observed properties of dwarf galaxies in and around the Local Group
• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• The Structure of Dark Matter Haloes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Observations of the Crab Nebula with H.E.S.S
• The GALEX Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies
• PPPC 4 DM ID: A Poor Particle Physicist Cookbook for Dark Matter Indirect Detection
• Cosmicflows-2: The Data
• Observability of Gamma Rays from Dark Matter Neutralino Annihilations in the Milky Way Halo
• High-resolution mass models of dwarf galaxies from LITTLE THINGS
• Background Modelling in Very-High-Energy gamma-ray Astronomy
• Weak Corrections are Relevant for Dark Matter Indirect Detection
• A high performance likelihood reconstruction of gamma-rays for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
• Cold dark matter heats up
• Search for dark matter annihilations towards the inner Galactic halo from 10 years of observations with H.E.S.S
• NIHAO IV: Core creation and destruction in dark matter density profiles across cosmic time
• Dark matter heats up in dwarf galaxies
• A Monte Carlo Template based analysis for Air-Cherenkov Arrays
• The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs: a critical test of $\Lambda$CDM at the edge of galaxy formation
• Understanding the shape and diversity of dwarf galaxy rotation curves in LCDM
• Outside-in Shrinking of the Star-forming Disk of Dwarf Irregular Galaxies
• Search for $\gamma$-ray line signals from dark matter annihilations in the inner Galactic halo from ten years of observations with H.E.S.S
• The universal rotation curve of dwarf disk galaxies
• LITTLE THINGS in 3D: robust determination of the circular velocity of dwarf irregular galaxies
• The Resolved Structure and Dynamics of an Isolated Dwarf Galaxy: A VLT and Keck Spectroscopic Survey of WLM
• Search for dark matter annihilation signatures in H.E.S.S. observations of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• Dark matter annihilation and decay profiles for the Reticulum II dwarf spheroidal galaxy
• Search for dark matter signals towards a selection of recently-detected DES dwarf galaxy satellites of the Milky Way with H.E.S.S
• Searches for gamma-ray lines and `pure WIMP' spectra from Dark Matter annihilations in dwarf galaxies with H.E.S.S
• Stellar Metallicities and Kinematics in a Gas-Rich Dwarf Galaxy: First Calcium Triplet Spectroscopy of RGB Stars in WLM
• The local Tully-Fisher relation for dwarf galaxies
• Deep HST+STIS Color-Magnitude Diagrams of the Dwarf Irregular Galaxy WLM: Detection of the Horizontal Branch
• A NECTAr-based upgrade for the Cherenkov cameras of the H.E.S.S. 12-meter telescopes
• Theoretical predictions for dark matter detection in dwarf irregular galaxies with gamma rays
• Dwarf irregular galaxies with extended HI gas disks: Suppression of small-scale spiral structure by dark matter halo

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Toward the ultimate reach of current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes and their sensitivity to TeV dark matter
• TeV Dark Matter Searches in the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Sky
• Dark Matter search in dwarf irregular galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Galactic and Extragalactic Sources of Very High Energy Gamma-rays
• Searching for TeV Dark Matter in Irregular dwarf galaxies with HAWC Observatory
• Dark matter indirect detection limits from complete annihilation patterns
• CTA Sensitivity on TeV scale Dark Matter Models with Complementary Limits from Direct Detection
• Prospects for annihilating dark matter from M31 and M33 observations with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• The H.E.S.S. extragalactic sky survey with the first decade of observations
• H.E.S.S.: The High Energy Stereoscopic System