Abstract
With a mass of approximately ∼1012 solar masses, the Galactic Halo is the closest known large dark matter halo and a prime candidate for indirect dark matter detection. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) is a high energy (300 GeV to 100 TeV) gamma ray detector located in central Mexico. HAWC operates via the water Cherenkov technique and has both a wide field of view of ∼2 sr and a >95% duty cycle, making it ideal for analysis of highly extended sources. We made use of these properties of HAWC and a new background-estimation technique optimized for extended sources to probe a large region of the Galactic Halo for dark matter signals. With this approach and taking into account electroweak corrections to the gamma-ray spectra, we set improved constraints on dark matter annihilation and decay between masses of 10 and 100 TeV. Our constraints also take into account detector simulation systematics and are robust against uncertainties in the Galactic dark matter spatial profile.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | An Optimized Search for Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo with HAWC |
Volume | 395 |
Publication status | Published - 18 Mar 2022 |
Event | 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021 - Virtual, Berlin, Germany Duration: 12 Jul 2021 → 23 Jul 2021 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of Science |
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Publisher | Sissa Medialab Srl |
Conference
Conference | 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021 |
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Country/Territory | Germany |
City | Virtual, Berlin |
Period | 12/7/21 → 23/7/21 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General