The Dark Matter Contribution to Galactic Diffuse Gamma Ray Emission
Abstract
Observations of diffuse Galactic gamma ray emission (DGE) by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) allow a detailed study of cosmic rays and the interstellar medium. However, diffuse emission models of the inner Galaxy underpredict the Fermi-LAT data at energies above a few GeV and hint at possible non-astrophysical sources including dark matter (DM) annihilations or decays. We present a study of the possible emission components from DM using the high-resolution Via Lactea II N-body simulation of a Milky Way-sized DM halo. We generate full-sky maps of DM annihilation and decay signals that include modeling of the adiabatic contraction of the host density profile, Sommerfeld enhanced DM annihilations, -wave annihilations, and decaying DM. We compare our results with the DGE models produced by the Fermi-LAT team over different sky regions, including the Galactic center, high Galactic latitudes, and the Galactic anti-center. This work provides possible templates to fit the observational data that includes the contribution of the subhalo population to DM gamma-ray emission, with the significance depending on the annihilation/decay channels and the Galactic regions being considered.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1312.0006,
title = {The Dark Matter Contribution to Galactic Diffuse Gamma Ray Emission},
author = {Lin F. Yang and Joseph Silk and Alexander S. Szalay and Rosemary F. G. Wyse and Brandon Bozek and Piero Madau},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.0006},
year = {2014}
}
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Published by PRD