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Title: Search for 100 MeV to 10 GeV γ-ray lines in the Fermi-LAT data and implications for gravitino dark matter in the μνSSM

Journal Article · · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [1];  [1];  [6];  [7]
  1. W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Department of Physics; ; SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
  2. Instituto de Fisica Teorica UAM/CSIC and Departamento de Fisica Teorica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain); Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago (Chile); Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Roma (Italy)
  3. Instituto de Fisica Teorica UAM/CSIC and Departamento de Fisica Teorica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain); Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Universitat Hamburg (Germany)
  4. Instituto de Fisica Teorica UAM/CSIC and Departamento de Fisica Teorica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain)
  5. University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). GRAPPA
  6. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Bari (Italy)
  7. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Roma (Italy)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We present that dark matter decay or annihilation may produce monochromatic signals in the γ-ray energy range. In this work we argue that there are strong theoretical motivations for studying these signals in the framework of gravitino dark matter decay and we perform a search for γ-ray spectral lines from 100 MeV to 10 GeV with Fermi-LAT data. In contrast to previous line searches at higher energies, the sensitivity of the present search is dominated by systematic uncertainties across most of the energy range considered. We estimate the size of systematic effects by analysing the flux from a number of control regions, and include the systematic uncertainties consistently in our fitting procedure. We have not observed any significant signals and present model-independent limits on γ-ray line emission from decaying and annihilating dark matter. We apply the former limits to the case of the gravitino, a well-known dark matter candidate in supersymmetric scenarios. In particular, the R-parity violating ''μ from ν'' Supersymmetric Standard Model μνSSM) is an attractive scenario in which including right-handed neutrinos solves the μ problem of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model while simultaneously explaining the origin of neutrino masses. At the same time, the violation of R-parity renders the gravitino unstable and subject to decay into a photon and a neutrino. Finally, as a consequence of the limits on line emission, μνSSM gravitinos with masses larger than about 5 GeV, or lifetimes smaller than about 1028 s, are excluded at 95% confidence level as dark matter candidates.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1356439
Journal Information:
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 10; ISSN 1475-7516
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 53 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (19)

The e-ASTROGAM mission: Exploring the extreme Universe with gamma rays in the MeV – GeV range journal June 2017
Gamma-Ray Polarimetry: A New Window for the Nonthermal Universe journal September 2019
Strong optimized conservative Fermi-LAT constraints on dark matter models from the inclusive photon spectrum journal April 2015
Quantum field theory of relic nonequilibrium systems journal September 2015
Search for line-like signals in the all-sky Fermi-LAT data journal June 2019
Wimp searches with gamma rays in the Fermi era: Challenges, methods and results journal December 2015
Searching for left sneutrino LSP at the LHC journal July 2018
Search for Spectral Irregularities due to Photon–Axionlike-Particle Oscillations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope collection January 2016
The e-ASTROGAM mission text January 2017
Search for Spectral Irregularities due to Photon–Axionlike-Particle Oscillations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope text January 2016
WIMP searches with gamma rays in the Fermi era: challenges, methods and results text January 2015
Strong Optimized Conservative Fermi-LAT Constraints on Dark Matter Models from the Inclusive Photon Spectrum text January 2015
The e-ASTROGAM mission (exploring the extreme Universe with gamma rays in the MeV-GeV range) text January 2016
Searching for left sneutrino LSP at the LHC text January 2017
Gamma Ray polarimetry; a new window for the non-thermal Universe text January 2019
Search for Gamma-ray Emission from Dark Matter Annihilation in the Large Magellanic Cloud with the Fermi Large Area Telescope text January 2015
The Darkest Hour Before Dawn: Contributions to Cosmic Reionization from Dark Matter Annihilation and Decay text January 2016
Prospects for indirect dark matter searches with MeV photons text January 2017
TASI Lectures on Indirect Detection of Dark Matter preprint January 2017

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79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
gamma ray experiments
dark matter experiments
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