SEARCH FOR GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM DES DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY CANDIDATES WITH FERMI-LAT DATA

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2015-08-04

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

A. Drlica-Wagner et al., SEARCH FOR GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM DES DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY CANDIDATES WITH FERMI-LAT DATA, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 809, Number 1, doi:10.1088/2041-8205/809/1/L4

Rights

This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Public Domain Mark 1.0
This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law

Subjects

Abstract

Due to their proximity, high dark-matter (DM) content, and apparent absence of non-thermal processes, Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) are excellent targets for the indirect detection of DM. Recently, eight new dSph candidates were discovered using the first year of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We searched for gamma-ray emission coincident with the positions of these new objects in six years of Fermi Large Area Telescope data. We found no significant excesses of gamma-ray emission. Under the assumption that the DES candidates are dSphs with DM halo properties similar to the known dSphs, we computed individual and combined limits on the velocity-averaged DM annihilation cross section for these new targets. If the estimated DM content of these dSph candidates is confirmed, they will constrain the annihilation cross section to lie below the thermal relic cross section for DM particles with masses <= 20 GeV annihilating via the bb or τ+τ− channels.