2006/10/31 by Edward A. Baltz, James E. Taylor, L. Wai +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Baryonic dark matter #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Dark matter halo #Galactic halo #Galaxy #Halo #Light dark matter #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics #Physics #Scalar field dark matter #WIMP #Weakly interacting massive particles #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/517882
4 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2007/03/08 · openalex publication_date 2007/03/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The nature of the cosmic dark matter is unknown. The most compelling hypothesis is that dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the 100 GeV mass range. Such particles would annihilate in the Galactic halo, producing high-energy gamma rays that might be detectable in gamma-ray telescopes such as the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope ( GLAST ). We investigate the ability of GLAST to distinguish between WIMP annihilation sources and astrophysical sources. Focusing on the Galactic satellite halos predicted by the cold dark matter model, we find that the WIMP gamma-ray spectrum is nearly unique; separation of the brightest WIMP sources from known source classes can be done in a convincing way by including spectral and spatial information. Candidate WIMP sources can be further studied with imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes. Finally, Large Hadron Collider data might have a crucial impact on the study of Galactic dark matter.