The origin of both the diffuse high-latitude MeV gamma-ray emission and the 511 keV line flux from the Galactic bulge are uncertain. Previous studies have invoked dark matter physics to independently explain these observations, though as yet none has been able to explain both of these emissions within the well-motivated framework of Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Here we use an unstable WIMP dark matter model to show that it is in fact possible to simultaneously reconcile both of these observations, and in the process show a remarkable coincidence: decaying dark matter with MeV mass splittings can explain both observations if positrons and photons are produced with similar branching fractions. We illustrate this idea with an unstable branon, which is a standard WIMP dark matter candidate appearing in brane world models with large extra dimensions. We show that because branons decay via three-body final states, they are additionally unconstrained by searches for Galactic MeV gamma-ray lines. As a result, such unstable long-lifetime dark matter particles provide novel and distinct signatures that can be tested by future observations of MeV gamma-rays.
I discuss contributions to the diffuse gamma-ray background from decay and annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). I first review the calculation of the cosmological abundance of a WIMP and show that it is simply related to the cross section for annihilation of the WIMP into lighter particles. The diffuse extragalactic background radiation (DEBRA) from WIMP decay is then discussed. I show how observational upper limits to the DEBRA can be used to constrain properties of WIMPs that decay to photons, and I present additional new constraints that unitarity of the annihilatio…
Recent theoretical and observational motivations for existence of a decaying Ultra Heavy Dark Matter (UHDM) are reviewed. We show that present data from Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) and SN - Ia are compatible with a relatively short lifetime of UHDM.
Several recent studies have considered modifications to the standard weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) scenario in which the cross section (times relative velocity v) for pair annihilation is enhanced by a factor 1/v. Since v~10^{-3} in the Galactic halo, this may boost the annihilation rate into photons and/or electron-positron pairs enough to explain several puzzling Galactic radiation signals. Here we show that if the annihilation cross section scales as 1/v, then there is a burst of WIMP annihilation in the first dark-matter halos that form at redshifts z ~ 100-200. If the annihil…
The EGRET excess in the diffuse galactic gamma ray data above 1 GeV shows all the features expected from Dark Matter WIMP Annihilation: a)it is present and has the same spectrum in all sky directions, not just in the galactic plane. b) The intensity of the excess shows the $1/r^2$ profile expected for a flat rotation curve outside the galactic disc with additionally an interesting substructure in the disc in the form of a doughnut shaped ring at 14 kpc from the centre of the galaxy. At this radius a ring of stars indicates the probable infall of a dwarf galaxy, which can explain the increase i…
Measurement of the extragalactic background (EGBR) of diffuse gamma-rays is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for future gamma-ray observatories, such as GLAST. This is because any determination will depend on accurate subtraction of the galactic diffuse and celestial foregrounds, as well as point sources. However, the EGBR is likely to contain very rich information about the high energy-gamma ray sources of the Universe at cosmological distances. We focus on the ability of GLAST to detect a signal from dark matter in the EGBR. We present sensitivities for generic thermal WIMPs and the…
Dark matter particles need not be completely stable, and in fact they may be decaying now. We consider this possibility in the frameworks of universal extra dimensions and supersymmetry with very late decays of WIMPs to Kaluza-Klein gravitons and gravitinos. The diffuse photon background is a sensitive probe, even for lifetimes far greater than the age of the Universe. Remarkably, both the energy spectrum and flux of the observed MeV gamma ray excess may be naturally explained by decaying dark matter with MeV mass splittings. Future observations of continuum and line photon fluxes will test th…
It has been suggested that the origin of cosmic rays above the GZK limit might be explained by the decay of particles, X, with mass of the order of 10^{12} GeV. Generation of heavy particles from inflationary quantum fluctuations is a prime candidate for the origin of the decaying X particles. It has also been suggested that the problem of non-singular galactic halos might be explained if dark matter originates non-thermally from the decay of particles, Y, such that there is a free-streaming length of the order of 0.1Mpc. Here we explore the possibility that quantum fluctuations might account …
Elsaesser and Mannheim fit a contribution of Dark Matter Annihilation (DMA) to the extragalactic contribution of the galactic diffuse gamma ray flux, as deduced from the EGRET data by Strong, Moskalenko and Reimer.They find a WIMP mass of 515{+110}{-75} GeV and quote a systematic error of 30\%. However, they do not include large systematic uncertainties from the fact that the determination of the extragalactic flux (EGF) requires a model for the subtraction of the Galactic flux from the data.The data used were obtained with a model without Galactic DM, so one expects additional uncertainty in …
We explore the possible signatures of dark matter (DM) pair annihilations in the nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxy Draco. After investigating the mass models for Draco in the light of available observational data, we carefully model the DM density profile, taking advantage of numerical simulations of hierarchical structure formation. We then analyze the gamma-ray and electron/positron yield expected for weakly interacting DM particle (WIMP) models, including an accurate treatment of the propagation of the charged particle species. We show that unlike in larger DM structures - such as galaxy clust…
The Galactic diffuse emission is potentially able to reveal much about the sources and propagation of cosmic rays (CR), their spectra and intensities in distant locations. It can possibly unveil WIMP dark matter (DM) through its annihilation signatures. The extragalactic background may provide vital information about the early stages of the universe, neutralino annihilation, and unresolved sources (blazars?) and their cosmological evolution. The gamma-ray instrument EGRET on the CGRO contributed much to the exploration of the Galactic diffuse emission. The new NASA Gamma-ray Large Area Space T…
Various recent observational developments are here used to make a more critical analysis of the parameter space of the decaying neutrino theory for the ionisation of the interstellar medium. These developments involve phenomena inside our Galaxy, outside the Galaxy but at essentially zero red shift, and at large red shifts. This new analysis leads to a viable theory with a decay lifetime of $2{\pm}1\times 10^{23}$ sec, a decay photon energy of $13.7{\pm}0.1$ eV, and a mass for the decaying neutrino of $27.4 {\pm}0.2$ eV. These parameters, when combined with some known astronomical quantities, …
We perform a systematic study of the multi-wavelength signal induced by weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) annihilations at the Galactic Center (GC). Referring to a generic WIMP dark matter (DM) scenario and depending on astrophysical inputs, we discuss spectral and angular features and sketch correlations among signals in the different energy bands. None of the components which have been associated to the GC source Sgr A*, nor the diffuse emission components from the GC region, have spectral or angular features typical of a DM source. Still, data-sets at all energy bands, namely, the …
One of the targets of the recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a diffuse gamma-ray background from dark-matter annihilation or decay in the Galactic halo. N-body simulations and theoretical arguments suggest that the dark matter in the Galactic halo may be clumped into substructure, rather than smoothly distributed. Here we propose the gamma-ray-flux probability distribution function (PDF) as a probe of substructure in the Galactic halo. We calculate this PDF for a phenomenological model of halo substructure and determine the regions of the substructure parameter space in which…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a viable candidate for the relic abundance of dark matter (DM) produced in the early universe. So far WIMPs have eluded direct detection through interactions with baryonic matter. Neutrino emission from accumulated WIMP annihilations in the solar core has been proposed as a signature of DM, but has not yet been detected. These null results may be due to small scale DM density fluctuations in the halo with the density of our local region being lower than the average (around 0.3 GeV/cm^3 ). However, the accumulated neutrino signal from WIMP annihi…
We study a scenario that a hidden gauge boson constitutes the dominant component of dark matter and decays into the standard model particles through a gauge kinetic mixing. Interestingly, gamma rays and positrons produced from the decay of hidden gauge boson can explain both the EGRET excess of diffuse gamma rays and the HEAT anomaly in the positron fraction. The spectra of the gamma rays and the positrons have distinctive features; the absence of line emission of the gamma ray and a sharp peak in the positron fraction. Such features may be observed by the GLAST and PAMELA satellites.
The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled to be launched in Fall 2007, is a next generation high energy gamma-ray observatory. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument on-board GLAST with a wide field of view ($>$ 2 sr), large effective area and 20 MeV to $>$300 GeV energy range, will provide excellent opportunity for future Dark Matter studies. We present an overview of the GLAST Dark Matter and New Physics Working Group efforts in the study of the LAT capability to detect a gamma-ray flux coming from WIMP pair annihilations in diffuse astrophysical sources. Particular atte…
The CACTUS atmospheric Cherenkov telescope collaboration recently reported a gamma-ray excess from the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Draco features a very low gas content and a large mass-to-light ratio, suggesting as a possible explanation annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the Draco dark-matter halo. We show that with improved angular resolution, future measurements can determine whether the halo is cored or cuspy, as well as its scale radius. We find the relevant WIMP masses and annihilation cross sections and show that supersymmetric models can account for the…
We obtain the spectrum of gamma ray emissions from the moduli whose decay into $e^+ e^-$ accounts for the 511 keV line observed by SPI/INTERGRAL. The moduli emit gamma rays through internal bremsstrahlung, and also decay directly into two gammas via tree and/or one-loop diagrams. We show that the internal bremsstahlung constrains the mass of the moduli below $\sim 40$ MeV model-independently. On the other hand, the flux of two gammas directly decayed from the moduli through one loop diagrams will exceed the observed galactic diffuse gamma-ray background if the moduli mass exceeds $\sim 20$ MeV…
The public data from the EGRET space telescope on diffuse Galactic gamma rays in the energy range from 0.1 to 10 GeV are reanalyzed with the purpose of searching for signals of Dark Matter annihilation (DMA). The analysis confirms the previously observed excess for energies above 1 GeV in comparison with the expectations from conventional Galactic models. In addition, the excess was found to show all the key features of a signal from Dark Matter Annihilation (DMA): a) the excess is observable in all sky directions and has the same shape everywhere, thus pointing to a common source; b) the shap…
The extragalactic background (EGB) of diffuse gamma rays can be determined by subtracting the Galactic contribution from the data. This requires a Galactic model (GM) and we include for the first time the contribution of dark matter annihilation (DMA), which was previously proposed as an explanation for the EGRET excess of diffuse Galactic gamma rays above 1 GeV. In this paper it is shown that the newly determined EGB shows a characteristic high energy bump on top of a steeply falling soft contribution. The bump is shown to be compatible with a contribution from an extragalactic DMA signal fro…
A generic feature of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter models is the emission of photons over a broad energy band resulting from the stable yields of dark matter pair annihilation. Inverse Compton scattering off cosmic microwave background photons of energetic electrons and positrons produced in dark matter annihilation is expected to produce significant diffuse X-ray emission. Dwarf galaxies are ideal targets for this type of dark matter search technique, being nearby, dark matter dominated systems free of any astrophysical diffuse X-ray background. In this paper, we pres…
The recently constructed Dehnen-Binney set of mass models for the Galaxy is used to show that the decaying neutrino theory for the ionisation of the interstellar medium (Sciama 1990a, 1993) requires the neutrino halo of the Galaxy to be as flattened as is observationally permitted (axial ratio q=0.2 or shape E8). The argument involves an evaluation of the contribution of red-shifted decay photons from the cosmological distribution of neutrinos to the extragalactic diffuse background at 1500 Angstroms. This contribution must be as large as is observationally permitted. These two requirements de…
We propose a new signature for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter, a spectral feature in the diffuse extragalactic gamma-ray radiation. This feature, a sudden drop of the gamma-ray intensity at an energy corresponding to the WIMP mass, comes from the asymmetric distortion of the line due to WIMP annihilation into two gamma-rays caused by the cosmological redshift. Unlike other proposed searches for a line signal, this method is not very sensitive to the exact dark matter density distribution in halos and subhalos. The only requirement is that the mass distribution of substr…
Recent Chandra and Newton observations indicate that there are two-temperature components ($T \sim$ 8 keV, 0.8 keV) of the diffuse x-rays emitted from deep inside the center of Milky Way. We show that this can be explained by the existence of sterile neutrinos, which decay to emit photons that can be bound-free absorbed by the isothermal hot gas particles in the center of Milky Way. This model can account for the two-temperature components naturally as well as the energy needed to maintain the $\sim$ 8 keV temperature in the hot gas. The predicted sterile neutrino mass is between 16-18 keV.
The annihilation of neutralino dark matter may result in observable signals in different wavelength. In the present paper we will discuss the effect of neutralino annihilation in the halo of our Galaxy and in its center. According to high resolution cold dark matter simulations, large virialized halos are formed through the constant merging of smaller halos appeared at previous times. At each epoch, dark matter halos have then a clumpy component which is made of these merging subhalos. The annihilation of dark matter in these clumps, always present in the halo of our Galaxy, may be responsible…
The excess of diffuse galactic gamma rays above 1 GeV, as observed by the EGRET telescope on the NASA Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, shows all the key features from Dark Matter (DM) annihilation: (i) the energy spectrum of the excess is the same in all sky directions and is consistent with the gamma rays expected for the annihilation of WIMPs with a mass between 50-100 GeV; (ii) the intensity distribution of the excess in the sky is used to determine the halo profile, which was found to correspond to the usual profile from N-body simulations with additional substructure in the form of two doug…
The diffuse galactic EGRET gamma ray data show a clear excess for energies above 1 GeV in comparison with the expectations from conventional galactic models. This excess shows all the features expected from Dark Matter WIMP Annihilation: a)it is present and has the same spectrum in all sky directions, not just in the galactic plane, as expected for WIMP annihilation b) it shows an interesting substructure in the form of a doughnut shaped ring at 14 kpc from the centre of the galaxy, where a ring of stars indicated the probable infall of a dwarf galaxy. From the spectral shape of the excess the…
Progress in observational cosmology over the past five years has established that the Universe is dominated dynamically by dark matter and dark energy. Both these new and apparently independent forms of matter-energy have properties that are inconsistent with anything in the existing standard model of particle physics, and it appears that the latter must be extended. We review what is known about dark matter and energy from their impact on the light of the night sky. Most of the candidates that have been proposed so far are not perfectly black, but decay into or otherwise interact with photons…
Starting from a Caldeira-Leggett model for the interaction of a system with an environment, Joichi, Matsumoto, and Yoshimura have reconsidered the derivation of the quantum Boltzmann equation. They find an extra term that accounts for the effects of virtual particles, and which drastically changes the results for relic densities of stable, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and for the decay products of unstable particles. We show, however, that this modified Boltzmann equation does not properly account for the interaction energy between the massive particles (which are decaying or …
We investigate the sensitivity of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) to indirectly detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) through the $γ$-ray signal that their pair annihilation produces. WIMPs are among the favorite candidates to explain the compelling evidence that about 80% of the mass in the Universe is non-baryonic dark matter (DM). They are serendipitously motivated by various extensions of the standard model of particle physics such as Supersymmetry and Universal Extra Dimensions (UED). With its unprecedented sensitivity and its very large energy range (20 MeV…
The EGRET excess of diffuse Galactic gamma rays shows all the key features of dark matter annihilation (DMA) for a WIMP mass in the range 50-100 GeV, especially the distribution of the excess is compatible with a standard halo profile with some additional ringlike substructures at 4 and 13 kpc from the Galactic centre. These substructures coincide with the gravitational potential well expected from the ring of dust at 4 kpc and the tidal stream of dark matter from the Canis Major satellite galaxy at 13 kpc, as deduced from N-body simulations fitting to the Monoceros ring of stars. Strong indep…
The EGRET excess in the diffuse galactic gamma ray data above 1 GeV shows all features expected from Dark Matter WIMP Annihilation: a)it is present and has the same spectrum in all sky directions, not just in the galactic plane. b) The intensity of the excess shows the $1/r^2$ profile expected for a flat rotation curve outside the galactic disc with additionally an interesting substructure in the disc in the form of a doughnut shaped ring at 14 kpc from the centre of the galaxy. At this radius a ring of stars indicates the probable infall of a dwarf galaxy, which can explain the increase in DM…
A number of theories, spanning a wide range of mass scales, predict dark matter candidates that have lifetimes much longer than the age of the universe, yet may produce a significant flux of gamma rays in their decays today. We constrain such late decaying dark matter scenarios model-independently by utilizing gamma-ray line emission limits from the Galactic Center region obtained with the SPI spectrometer on INTEGRAL, and the determination of the isotropic diffuse photon background by SPI, COMPTEL and EGRET observations. We show that no more than ~5% of the unexplained MeV background can be p…
In this work we will review the main properties of brane-world models with low tension. Starting from very general principles, it is possible to obtain an effective action for the relevant degrees of freedom at low energies (branons). Using the cross sections for high-energy processes involving branons, we set bounds on the different parameters appearing in these models. We also show that branons provide a WIMP candidate for dark matter in a natural way. We consider cosmological constraints on its thermal and non-thermal relic abundances. We derive direct detection limits and compare those lim…
An interesting strategy for indirect detection of Dark Matter comes through the amounts of electrons and positrons usually emitted by DM pair annihilation. The e+e- gyrating in the galactic magnetic field then produce secondary synchrotron radiation. The radio emission from the galactic halo as well as from its expected substructures if compared with the measured diffuse radio background can provide constraints on the physics of WIMPs. In particular one gets the bound of <sigma_A*v> = 10^{-24} cm^3 s^{-1} for a DM mass m_chi = 100 GeV even though sensibly depending on the astrophysical uncerta…
Cold dark matter may be made of superweakly-interacting massive particles, superWIMPs, that naturally inherit the desired relic density from late decays of metastable WIMPs. Well-motivated examples are weak-scale gravitinos in supergravity and Kaluza-Klein gravitons from extra dimensions. These particles are impossible to detect in all dark matter experiments. We find, however, that superWIMP dark matter may be discovered through cosmological signatures from the early universe. In particular, superWIMP dark matter has observable consequences for Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwav…
We present high resolution 240 and 607 MHz GMRT radio observations, complemented with 74 MHz archival VLA radio observations of the Ophiuchus cluster of galaxies, whose radio mini-halo has been recently detected at 1400 MHz. We also present archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data of the Ophiuchus cluster. Our observations do not show significant radio emission from the mini-halo, hence we present upper limits to the integrated, diffuse non-thermal radio emission of the core of the Ophiuchus cluster. The XMM-Newton observations can be well explained by a two-temperature thermal model with temperat…
