Will GLAST Identify Dark Matter?

Journal Article · Thu Jul 12 04:00:00 EDT 2007 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2757297· OSTI ID:21067214

Taylor, James E ^[1]; Baltz, Edward A; Wai, Lawrence L ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1 (Canada)
2. KIPAC, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, MS 29, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 (United States)

The nature of the cosmic dark matter is unknown. One strong possibility 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. I discuss the ability of GLAST to distinguish between WIMP annihilation sources and known astrophysical source classes. Focusing on the emission from the halo substructure predicted by the cold dark matter model, the WIMP gamma-ray spectrum is nearly unique; separation from known source classes can be done in a convincing way by including spectral and spatial information. Astrophysical detection of dark matter by GLAST would be particularly timely, given the new probes of this energy range that will be available at the Large Hadron Collider, starting in 2008.

• OSTI ID: 21067214
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 921; ISSN 0094-243X; ISSN APCPCS
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ANNIHILATION
ASTROPHYSICS
COSMIC PHOTONS
COSMIC RAY DETECTION
GAMMA DETECTION
GAMMA SPECTRA
GAMMA SPECTROSCOPY
GEV RANGE
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PARTICLE IDENTIFICATION
PHOTON EMISSION
REST MASS
TELESCOPE COUNTERS
WEAK INTERACTIONS