UCI/Kavli IPMU: Dark Matter Destruction Ruled Out in Galactic Center

[bystander]

Study Rules Out Dark Matter Destruction as
Origin of Extra Radiation in Galactic Center
University of California, Irvine | Kavli IPMU | University of Tokyo | 2020 Sep 14

Exhaustive emissions modeling by global physicists narrows down particle candidates

An artist’s interpretation of the Milky Way shows the 'boxy' distribution of stars in the Galactic Center. A research team of physicists said in a newly published study that this shape leaves very little room for excess radiation from the destruction of dark matter particles. (Credit: Oscar Macias/UCI)

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The detection more than a decade ago by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope of an excess of high-energy radiation in the center of the Milky Way convinced some physicists that they were seeing evidence of the annihilation of dark matter particles, but a team ... has ruled out that interpretation.

In a paper published recently in the journal Physical Review D, scientists ... report that – through an analysis of the Fermi data and an exhaustive series of modeling exercises – they were able to determine that the observed gamma rays could not have been produced by what are called weakly interacting massive particles, most popularly theorized as the stuff of dark matter.

By eliminating these particles, the destruction of which could generate energies of up to 300 giga-electron volts, the paper’s authors say, they have put the strongest constraints yet on dark matter properties. ...

Strong Constraints on Thermal Relic Dark Matter from Fermi-LAT
Observations of the Galactic Center ~ Kevork N. Abazajian et al

• Physical Review D 102(04):3012 (15 Aug 2020) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.043012
• arXiv.org > hep-ph > arXiv:2003.10416 > 23 Mar 2020 (v1), 20 Aug 2020 (v2)