Constraining branon dark matter from observations of the Segue 1 dwarf spheroidal galaxy with the MAGIC telescopes

Abstract

We present the first search for signatures of brane-world extra-dimensional dark matter (DM) in the very-high-energy gamma-ray band by scrutinizing observations of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Segue 1 with the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope system. Branons are new degrees of freedom that appear within flexible brane-world models: they are weakly interacting massive particles and natural DM candidates. The ground-based gamma-ray telescopes MAGIC could indirectly detect branon DM in the multi-TeV mass range by observing secondary products of DM annihilation into Standard Model particles. In the absence of a signal, we place constraints on the branon DM parameter space by using a binned likelihood analysis of almost 160-hours deep exposure on the Segue 1 dwarf spheroidal galaxy by the MAGIC telescopes. Our most stringent limit to the thermally-averaged annihilation cross-section (at $95\%$ confidence level) corresponds to $⟨\sigma v⟩\simeq 1.4\times 10^{-23}{\text{cm}}^3{\text{s}}^{-1}$ at a branon mass of $\sim 0.7\text{TeV}$.

11 pages, 3 figures

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