A sensitive search for unknown spectral emission lines in the diffuse X-ray background with XMM-Newton
- Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, D-22761 Hamburg (Germany)
- Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, D-21029 Hamburg (Germany)
The Standard Model of particle physics can be extended to include sterile (right-handed) neutrinos or axions to solve the dark matter problem. Depending upon the mixing angle between active and sterile neutrinos, the latter have the possibility to decay into monoenergetic active neutrinos and photons in the keV-range while axions can couple to two photons. We have used data taken with the X-ray telescope XMM-Newton for the search of line emissions. We used pointings with high exposures and expected dark matter column densities with respect to the dark matter halo of the Milky Way. The posterior predictive p-value analysis has been applied to locate parameter space regions which favour additional emission lines. In addition, upper limits of the parameter space of the models have been generated such that the preexisting limits have been significantly improved.
- OSTI ID:
- 22676150
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2017, Issue 06; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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