Searching for Dark Matter Annihilation from Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with Six Years of Fermi Large Area Telescope Data
Abstract
The dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) of the Milky Way are some of the most dark matter (DM) dominated objects known. We report on γ -ray observations of Milky Way dSphs based on six years of Fermi Large Area Telescope data processed with the new Pass8 event-level analysis. None of the dSphs are significantly detected in γ rays, and we present upper limits on the DM annihilation cross section from a combined analysis of 15 dSphs. These constraints are among the strongest and most robust to date and lie below the canonical thermal relic cross section for DM of mass ≲100 GeV annihilating via quark and τ -lepton channels.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- December 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.231301
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1503.02641
- Bibcode:
- 2015PhRvL.115w1301A
- Keywords:
-
- 95.35.+d;
- 95.85.Pw;
- 98.56.Wm;
- 98.70.Rz;
- Dark matter;
- gamma-ray;
- Dwarf galaxies;
- gamma-ray sources;
- gamma-ray bursts;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- High Energy Physics - Experiment
- E-Print:
- Accepted by PRL. 18 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Includes Supplementary Materials. Corresponding Authors: Brandon Anderson, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Matthew Wood