Improved Heavy Dark Matter Annihilation Search from Dwarf Galaxies with HAWC
Abstract
Understanding dark matter's elusive nature is crucial for the framework of particle physics and expanding the Standard Model. This analysis utilizes the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma ray Observatory to indirectly search for dark matter (DM) by studying gamma ray emission from dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). Selected for their high ratio of dark matter to baryonic matter, dSphs are useful for this type of search owing to the low background emission. In comparison to previous HAWC studies, we significantly improve our sensitivity to DM from dSphs due to improvements to our event reconstruction and reduced hadronic contamination. We expanded the number of dSphs studied, DM annihilation channels into the Standard Model (SM), and the amount of data collected on each previously studied dSph. We searched for DM signals in each dSph using the latest version of the algorithms used to reconstruct data from the primary detector of the HAWC instrument. We report that we do not detect evidence of DM from dSphs, so we place upper limits for the velocity-weighted DM annihilation cross-section () on the order of for a DM mass range of TeV.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.05955,
title = {Improved Heavy Dark Matter Annihilation Search from Dwarf Galaxies with HAWC},
author = {A. Albert and R. Alfaro and C. Alvarez and A. Andrés and E. Anita-Rangel and M. Araya and J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez and D. Avila Rojas and H. A. Ayala Solares and R. Babu and P. Bangale and E. Belmont-Moreno and A. Bernal and K. S. Caballero-Mora and T. Capistrán and A. Carramiñana and F. Carreón and S. Casanova and A. L. Colmenero-Cesar and U. Cotti and J. Cotzomi and S. Coutiño de León and E. De la Fuente and C. de León and P. Desiati and N. Di Lalla and R. Diaz Hernandez and M. A. DuVernois and J. C. Díaz-Vélez and K. Engel and T. Ergin and C. Espinoza and N. Fraija and S. Fraija and A. Galván-Gámez and J. A. García-González and F. Garfias and N. Ghosh and A. Gonzalez Muñoz and M. M. González and J. A. González and J. A. Goodman and J. Gyeong and J. P. Harding and S. Hernández-Cadena and I. Herzog and D. Huang and F. Hueyotl-Zahuantitla and P. Hüntemeyer and A. Iriarte and S. Kaufmann and D. Kieda and K. Leavitt and W. H. Lee and J. Lee and H. León Vargas and J. T. Linnemann and A. L. Longinotti and G. Luis-Raya and C. Lundy and K. Malone and O. Martinez and J. Martínez-Castro and H. Martínez-Huerta and J. A. Matthews and P. Miranda-Romagnoli and P. E. Mirón-Enriquez and J. A. Morales-Soto and E. Moreno and M. Mostafá and M. Najafi and A. Nayerhoda and L. Nellen and M. U. Nisa and R. Noriega-Papaqui and N. Omodei and E. Ponce and Y. Pérez Araujo and E. G. Pérez-Pérez and C. D. Rho and A. Rodriguez Parra and D. Rosa-González and M. Roth and H. Salazar and D. Salazar-Gallegos and A. Sandoval and M. Schneider and J. Serna-Franco and M. Shin and A. J. Smith and Y. Son and R. W. Springer and O. Tibolla and K. Tollefson and I. Torres and R. Torres-Escobedo and F. Ureña-Mena and E. Varela and L. Villaseñor and X. Wang and Z. Wang and I. J. Watson and H. Wu and S. Yu and X. Zhang and H. Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.05955},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
26 pages, 12 Figures, 3 tables