Will GLAST Identify Dark Matter?

Conference · Tue Nov 13 04:00:00 EST 2007 · AIP Conf.Proc.921:178-180,2007

OSTI ID:919804

Taylor, James E; Baltz, Edward A; Wai, Lawrence L

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.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 919804
• Report Number(s): SLAC-REPRINT-2007-226
• Conference Information: Journal Name: AIP Conf.Proc.921:178-180,2007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
ANNIHILATION
Astrophysics
ASTRO
DETECTION
ENERGY RANGE
FOCUSING
GAMMA ASTRONOMY
HADRONS
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PROBES