Spectral and spatial analysis of the dark matter subhalo candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope unidentified sources
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Date
2019-11-28
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Javier Coronado-Blázquez et al., Spectral and spatial analysis of the dark matter subhalo candidates among Fermi Large Area Telescope unidentified sources, Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Volume 2019 (2019), doi : 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045
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This is the version of the article before peer review or editing, as submitted by an author to Journal of Cosmology and Astro particle Physics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045.
This is the version of the article before peer review or editing, as submitted by an author to Journal of Cosmology and Astro particle Physics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/045.
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Abstract
Fermi-LAT unidentified sources (unIDs) have proven to be compelling targets for performing indirect dark matter (DM) searches. In a previous work, we found that among the 1235 unIDs in Fermi-LAT's catalogs (3FGL, 2FHL and 3FHL) only 44 of those are DM subhalos candidates. We now implement a spectral analysis to test whether these remaining sources are compatible or not with DM origin. This analysis is executed using almost 10 years of Pass 8 Fermi-LAT data. None of the unIDs are found to significantly prefer DM-induced emission compared to other, more conventional, astrophysical sources. In order to discriminate between pulsar and DM sources, we developed a new method which is based on the source's spectral curvature, peak energy, and its detection significance. We also look for spatial extension, which may be a hint for a DM origin according to our N-body simulation studies of the subhalo population. In addition, we used Gaia DR2 data to search for a potential stellar counterpart to our best DM subhalo candidates and, although no firm associations could be found, one of them coincides with the Sagittarius stream. Finally, previous constraints on the DM annihilation cross section are updated with the new number of remaining DM subhalo candidates among unIDs. Our limits now rule out canonical thermal WIMPs up to masses of 10 GeV for bbar b and 20 GeV for τ+τ− annihilation channels, in this way being as sensitive and complementary to those obtained from other targets and probes.