2021/03/24 by Shin'ichiro Ando, Shin’ichiro Ando, Suvendu K. Barik +17 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark galaxy #Dark matter #Dwarf galaxy #Dwarf galaxy problem #Dwarf spheroidal galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Interacting galaxy #Milky Way #Physics #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.104.023022
published as Phys. Rev. D 104, 023022 (2021) · 18 pages, 15 figures; comments welcome
arxiv created 2021/03/24 · openalex created_date 2021/03/29 · openalex publication_date 2021/07/26 · arxiv updated 2021/08/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are dark matter dominated systems, and as such, ideal for indirect dark matter searches. If dark matter decays into high-energy photons in the dwarf galaxies, they will be a good target for current and future generations of x-ray and gamma-ray telescopes. By adopting the latest estimates of density profiles of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way, we revise the estimates dark matter decay rates in dwarf galaxies; our results are more robust, but weaker than previous estimates. Applying these results, we study the detectability of dark matter decays with x-ray and very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes, such as eROSITA, XRISM, Athena, HAWC, and CTA. Our projection shows that all of these x-ray telescopes will be able to critically assess the claim of the 7 keV sterile neutrino decays from stacked galaxy clusters and nearby galaxies. For TeV decaying dark matter, we can constrain its lifetime to be longer than \ensuremath∼1027--1028 s. We also make projections for future dwarf galaxies that would be newly discovered with the Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which will further improve the expected sensitivity to dark matter decays both in the keV and PeV mass ranges.