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Spectral and spatial analysis of the dark matter subhalo candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope unidentified sources

Coronado-Blázquez, J; Sánchez-Conde, MA; Di Mauro, M; Aguirre-Santaella, A; Ciucă, I; Domínguez, A; Kawata, D; (2019) Spectral and spatial analysis of the dark matter subhalo candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope unidentified sources. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics , 2019 (11) , Article 45. 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045. Green open access

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Abstract

Fermi-LAT unidentified sources (unIDs) have proven to be compelling targets for performing indirect dark matter (DM) searches. In a previous work, we found that among the 1235 unIDs in Fermi-LAT's catalogs (3FGL, 2FHL and 3FHL) only 44 of those are DM subhalos candidates. We now implement a spectral analysis to test whether these remaining sources are compatible or not with DM origin. This analysis is executed using almost 10 years of Pass 8 Fermi-LAT data. None of the unIDs are found to significantly prefer DM-induced emission compared to other, more conventional, astrophysical sources. In order to discriminate between pulsar and DM sources, we developed a new method which is based on the source's spectral curvature, peak energy, and its detection significance. We also look for spatial extension, which may be a hint for a DM origin according to our N-body simulation studies of the subhalo population. In addition, we used Gaia DR2 data to search for a potential stellar counterpart to our best DM subhalo candidates and, although no firm associations could be found, one of them coincides with the Sagittarius stream. Finally, previous constraints on the DM annihilation cross section are updated with the new number of remaining DM subhalo candidates among unIDs. Our limits now rule out canonical thermal WIMPs up to masses of 10 GeV for bbar b and 20 GeV for τ+τ− annihilation channels, in this way being as sensitive and complementary to those obtained from other targets and probes.

Type: Article
Title: Spectral and spatial analysis of the dark matter subhalo candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope unidentified sources
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Dark matter experiments, dark matter simulations, dark matter theory, gamma ray experiments
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10092077
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