Detecting Dark Matter annihilation lines with Fermi

TL;DR

This paper reviews the methods used by the Fermi-LAT collaboration to search for monochromatic gamma-ray lines as potential signals of dark matter annihilation, highlighting the challenges and significance of detecting such a signature.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the search strategies and challenges for detecting dark matter annihilation lines with Fermi-LAT, emphasizing the importance of this potential discovery.

Findings

Fermi-LAT employs multiple approaches to search for gamma-ray lines.

Detecting monochromatic lines would be a definitive signature of dark matter.

The paper discusses the challenges in distinguishing signals from background noise.

Abstract

Dark matter constitutes one of the most intriguing but so far unresolved issues in physics today. In many extensions of the Standard Model the existence of a stable Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) is predicted. The WIMP is an excellent dark matter particle candidate and one of the most interesting scenarios include an annihilation of two WIMPs into two gamma-rays. If the WIMPs are assumed to be non-relativistic, the resulting photons will both have an energy equal to the mass of the WIMP and manifest themselves as a monochromatic spectral line in the energy spectrum. This type of signal would represent a "smoking gun" for dark matter, since no other known astrophysical process should be able to produce it. In these proceedings we give an overview of the different approaches to a search for dark matter lines that the Fermi-LAT collaboration is pursuing and the various challenges involved.