Related papers: Illuminating the Darkest Galaxies
The kinematics and elemental abundances of resolved stars in the nearby Universe can be used to infer conditions at high redshift, trace how galaxies evolve and constrain the nature of dark matter. This approach is complementary to direct…
A wealth of tiny galaxies populates the surroundings of the Milky Way. Some of these objects might have their origin as former satellites of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Examples of the importance of understanding how many systems are…
We analyze 11 years of Fermi-LAT data corresponding to the sky regions of 7 dwarf irregular (dIrr) galaxies. DIrrs are dark matter (DM) dominated systems, proposed as interesting targets for the indirect search of DM with gamma rays. The…
Dark matter annihilation in dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies near the Milky Way has the potential to produce a detectable signature in gamma-rays. The amplitude of this signal depends on the dark matter density in a dSph, the dark matter…
Recent results from gravitational lensing are combined with new modeling of the stellar velocity distributions in nearby galaxies to probe the connection between the luminous and the dark matter in elliptical galaxies. From analysing a…
The Milky Way has at least twenty-three known satellite galaxies that shine with luminosities ranging from about a thousand to a billion times that of the Sun. Half of these galaxies were discovered in the past few years in the Sloan…
Recent observations indicate that about half of the dwarf satellite galaxies around M31 orbit in a thin plane approximately aligned with the Milky Way. It has been argued that this observation along with several other features can be…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies compose one of the most dark matter dominated classes of objects, making them a set of targets to search for signals of dark matter annihilation. Recent developments in gamma-ray astronomy, most importantly the…
We discuss the formation of dark compact objects in a dark matter environment in view of the possible mass dependence of pulsars on the distribution of dark matter in the Galaxy. Our results indicate that the pulsar masses should decrease…
In the past decade, gamma-ray observations and radio observations put strong constraints on the parameters of dark matter annihilation. In this article, we suggest another robust way to constrain the parameters of dark matter annihilation.…
The nature of the dark matter remains a mystery. The possibility of an unstable dark matter particle decaying to invisible daughter particles has been explored many times in the past few decades. Meanwhile, weak gravitational lensing shear…
We study how the indirect observation of dark matter substructures in the Milky Way, using recent stellar stream studies, translates into constraints for different dark matter models. Particularly, we use the measured number of dark…
Mapping the dark matter distribution across our Galaxy represents a central challenge for the near future as a new generation of space-borne and ground-based astronomical surveys swiftly comes online. Here we present a synopsis of the…
We search for excess gamma-ray emission coincident with the positions of confirmed and candidate Milky Way satellite galaxies using 6 years of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). Our sample of 45 stellar systems includes 28…
We calculate the flux of high energy gamma-rays from annihilation of neutralino dark matter in the centre of the Milky Way and the three nearest dwarf spheroidals (Sagittarius, Draco and Canis Major), using realistic models of the dark…
Astronomers have been using the measured luminosity to estimate the {\em luminous mass} of stars, based on empirically established mass-to-light ratio which seems to be only applicable to a special class of stars---the main-sequence…
The field of weak gravitational lensing, which measures the basic properties of the Universe by studying the way that light from distant galaxies is perturbed as it travels towards us, is a very active field in astronomy. This short article…
Analysing the weak lensing distortions of the images of faint background galaxies provides a means to constrain the mass distribution of cluster galaxies and potentially to test the extent of their dark matter halos as a function of the…
The cold dark matter (CDM) model faces persistent challenges on small scales. In particular, taken at face value, the model significantly overestimates the number of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way. Attempts to solve this problem…
Weak lensing provides a direct measure of the distribution of mass in the universe, and is therefore a uniquely powerful probe of dark matter. Weak lensing can also be used to measure the twin phenomenon of dark energy, via its effect upon…