A weighty interpretation of the Galactic Centre excess
Abstract
Previous attempts at explaining the gamma-ray excess near the Galactic Centre have focussed on dark matter annihilation directly into Standard Model particles. This results in a preferred dark matter mass of 30-40 GeV (if the annihilation is into b quarks) or 10 GeV (if it is into leptons). Here we show that the gamma-ray excess is also consistent with heavier dark matter particles; in models of secluded dark matter, dark matter with mass up to 76 GeV provides a good fit to the data. This occurs if the dark matter first annihilates to an on-shell particle that subsequently decays to Standard Model particles through a portal interaction. This is a generic process that works in models with annihilation, semi-annihilation or both. We explicitly demonstrate this in a model of hidden vector dark matter with an SU(2) gauge group in the hidden sector.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1404.4977,
title = {A weighty interpretation of the Galactic Centre excess},
author = {Celine Boehm and Matthew J. Dolan and Christopher McCabe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.4977},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures. v2: Matches PRD version. Note: title of PRD version is "Interpretation of the Galactic Center excess of gamma rays with heavier dark matter particles"