Detecting Dark Matter Annihilation Lines With Fermi PDF Download

Abstract: Measurements indicate that ~85% of the matter in the universe neither emits nor reflects light--appropriately called "dark matter". We believe dark matter may be primary composed of new particles, but we know very little about their nature. What dark matter is and how it interacts is one of the top cosmological mysteries today. Detecting a signal from particle dark matter would not only offer insight into the fundamental nature of dark matter, but it would also be strong evidence for physics existing beyond the Standard Model. A promising dark matter candidate is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP). Measurements indicate that the Milky Way Galaxy resides in a halo of dark matter, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating these elusive particles. As WIMPs are predicted to be heavy, their interactions should produce high-energy gamma rays that would be detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi). If WIMPs annihilate directly into gamma rays, the gamma-ray energy would be the same as the rest mass energy of the WIMPs, which is currently unknown. This process would cause a "pile-up" of gamma rays at a specific energy, producing a sharp line (or bump) in the otherwise relatively smooth gamma-ray energy spectrum. This distinctive signal would not only be strong evidence for the existence of WIMPs, but would also provide information about their mass. We have searched for spectral lines in the energy range 5 to 300 GeV using 3.7 years of Fermi LAT data, reprocessed with updated calorimeter calibration constants, and an improved energy dispersion model from previous LAT Collaboration line searches. We search in five regions selected to optimize sensitivity to different theoretically-motivated density distributions of WIMPs. We do not find any globally significant lines in our a priori search regions and present 95% confidence limits for annihilation cross section and decay lifetimes. We extensively discuss potential systematic effects in the search. Finally, we consider claims of evidence for a spectral line at 130 GeV, compare our results to previous work, and discuss why this search finds a somewhat lower statistical significance for a potential line than other works.