2006/12/14 by Gianfranco Bertone, Torsten Bringmann, Bertone, Gianfranco +10
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0612387
13 pages, 8 figures; broken link in Ref.30 fixed
openalex publication_date 2006/12/14 · arxiv created 2006/12/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the prospects for detecting gamma-rays from point sources of Dark Matter annihilation with the space satellite GLAST. We simulate the instrument response to the gamma-ray spectrum arising from the annihilation of common Dark Matter candidates, and derive full-sky sensitivity maps for the \it detection of point sources and for the \it identification of the Dark Matter (as opposed to astrophysical) origin of the gamma-ray emission. These maps represent a powerful tool to assess the detectability of point sources, i.e. sources with angular size smaller than the angular resolution of GLAST, ~ 0.1 degrees, in \it any DM scenario. As an example, we apply the obtained results to the so-called 'mini-spikes' scenario, where the annihilation signal originates from large Dark Matter overdensities around Intermediate Mass Black Holes. We find that if these objects exist in the Galaxy, not only GLAST should be able to detect them over a timescale as short as 2 months, but in many cases it should be possible to determine with good accuracy the mass of the annihilating Dark Matter particles, while null searches would place stringent constraints on this scenario.