The dark knight falters
| dc.contributor.author | Mirabal, Nestor | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-09-02T18:44:00Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-09-02T18:44:00Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2013-02-11 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Tentative line emission at 111 and 129 GeV from 16 unassociated Fermi-LAT point sources has been reported recently by Su and Finkbeiner. Together with similar features seen by Fermi in a region near the Galactic Centre, the evidence has been interpreted as the spectral signature of dark matter annihilation or internal bremsstrahlung. Through a combination of supervised machine-learning algorithms and archival multiwavelength observations, we find that 14 out of the 16 unassociated sources showing that the line emission in the Su and Finkbeiner sample are most likely active galactic nuclei (AGN). Based on this new evidence, one must widen the range of possible solutions for the 100–140 GeV excess to include a very distinct astrophysical explanation. While we cannot rule out a dark matter origin for the line emission in the Galactic Centre, we posit that if the detection in the Su and Finkbeiner sample is indeed real it might be related to accretion, bubble or jet activity in nearby (z < 0.2) AGN. Alternatively, given the right conditions, the similarity could be due to a chance occurrence caused by extragalactic background light absorption. Or else one must concede that the features are an artefact of instrumental or calibration issues. | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | N.M. acknowledges support from the Spanish government through a Ram´on y Cajal fellowship and the ConsoliderIngenio 2010 Programme under grant MultiDark CSD2009-00064. We thank Doug Finkbeiner for helpful email exchanges. We acknowledge the use of public data from the Swift data archive. This research has made use of data obtained from the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Centre (HEASARC), provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. We also thank the referee for useful suggestions and comments on the manuscript. | en_US |
| dc.description.uri | https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/429/1/L109/1107457 | en_US |
| dc.format.extent | 5 pages | en_US |
| dc.genre | journal articles preprints | en_US |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.13016/m2pmxm-bctx | |
| dc.identifier.citation | N. Mirabal, The dark knight falters, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 429, Issue 1, 11 February 2013, Pages L109–L113, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/sls034 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/sls034 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11603/19574 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Oxford University Press | en_US |
| dc.relation.isAvailableAt | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Physics Department Collection | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST) / Center for Research and Exploration in Space Sciences & Technology II (CRSST II) | |
| dc.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. | |
| dc.rights | This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. | |
| dc.title | The dark knight falters | en_US |
| dc.type | Text | en_US |