Was There a 3.5 keV Line?

Dessert, Christopher; Foster, Joshua W.; Park, Yujin; Safdi, Benjamin R.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad2612

Title: Was There a 3.5 keV Line?

Journal Article · 29 March 2024 · The Astrophysical Journal

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad2612 · OSTI ID:2332912

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New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States); Flatiron Institute, New York, NY (United States)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

The 3.5 keV line is a purported emission line observed in galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the Milky Way whose origin is inconsistent with known atomic transitions and has previously been suggested to arise from dark matter decay. We systematically reexamine the bulk of the evidence for the 3.5 keV line, attempting to reproduce six previous analyses that found evidence for the line. We only reproduce one of the analyses; in the other five, we find no significant evidence for a 3.5 keV line when following the described analysis procedures on the original data sets. For example, previous results claimed 4σ evidence for a 3.5 keV line from the Perseus cluster; we dispute this claim, finding no evidence for a 3.5 keV line. We find evidence for background mismodeling in multiple analyses. We show that analyzing these data in narrower energy windows diminishes the effects of mismodeling but returns no evidence for a 3.5 keV line. We conclude that there is little robust evidence for the existence of the 3.5 keV line. Some of the discrepancy of our results from those of the original works may be due to the earlier reliance on local optimizers, which we demonstrate can lead to incorrect results. For ease of reproducibility, all code and data are publicly available.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; SC0019225; DESC0019225

OSTI ID:: 2332912

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 2448509

Journal Information:: The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 964, Issue 2; ISSN 0004-637X

Publisher:: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Title: Was There a 3.5 keV Line?

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