2023/01/19 by Geoff Beck, Sphesihle Makhathini, Beck, Geoff +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Scientific Research and Discoveries
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2301.07910
openalex publication_date 2023/01/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The MeerKAT telescope is a precursor experiment to the full Square Kilometre Array. The latter's potential to explore the nature of dark matter, via indirect detection, has received attention previously in the literature. In this work, we demonstrate the potential of MeerKAT to make initial forays into the dark matter parameter space through a Stimela-based simulation framework. In particular, we show that 20 hr MeerKAT observations at U- and L-band of the dwarf galaxy Reticulum II can improve the constraints on WIMP dark matter by a factor of 3 compared to current gamma-ray observations. Furthermore, these MeerKAT constraints are an order magnitude better than Fermi-LAT estimates from similar galaxies.