Gamma-ray background anisotropy from galactic dark matter substructure

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytic framework to predict gamma-ray background anisotropy caused by galactic dark matter subhalos, assessing detectability with Fermi and its potential to reveal substructure properties.

Contribution

It introduces analytic formulae for the angular power spectrum of gamma-ray background anisotropy due to dark matter subhalos, facilitating direct comparison with observational data.

Findings

Detection of subhalos possible at ~10 deg if mass spectrum extends to Earth-mass scale.

Anisotropy detection requires subhalo contribution >4% for certain mass ranges.

Analytic approach aids interpretation of Fermi gamma-ray data in terms of dark matter substructure.

Abstract

Dark matter annihilation in galactic substructure would imprint characteristic angular signatures on the all-sky map of the diffuse gamma-ray background. We study the gamma-ray background anisotropy due to the subhalos and discuss detectability at Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. We derive analytic formulae that enable to directly compute the angular power spectrum, given parameters of subhalos. As our fiducial subhalo models, we adopt M^{-1.9} mass spectrum, subhalos radial distribution suppressed towards the galactic center, and luminosity profile of each subhalo dominated by its smooth component. We find that, for multipole regime corresponding to \theta <~ 5 deg, the angular power spectrum is dominated by a noise-like term, with suppression due to internal structure of relevant subhalos. If the mass spectrum extends down to Earth-mass scale, then the subhalos would be detected in the anisotropy with Fermi at angular scales of ~10 deg, if their contribution to the gamma-ray background is larger than ~20%. If the minimum mass is around 10^4 M_{sun}, on the other hand, the relevant angular scale for detection is ~1 deg, and the anisotropy detection requires that the subhalo contribution to the gamma-ray background intensity is only ~4%. These can be achieved with a modest boost for particle physics parameters. We also find that the anisotropy analysis could be a more sensitive probe for the subhalos than individual detection. We also study dependence on model parameters, where we reach the similar conclusions for all the models investigated. The analytic approach should be very useful when Fermi data are analyzed and the obtained angular power spectrum is interpreted in terms of subhalo models.