Seen and unseen tidal caustics in the Andromeda galaxy

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detecting dark matter via gamma rays from tidal shell caustics in the Andromeda galaxy, finding low boost factors and fluxes below current detection thresholds.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of gamma-ray signals from tidal caustics in Andromeda, highlighting their limited detectability with current instruments.

Findings

Boost factors in shells are only a few percent.

Gamma-ray flux is too low for Fermi detection under typical dark matter models.

Shell density profiles are insensitive to the host galaxy's potential.

Abstract

Indirect detection of high-energy particles from dark matter interactions is a promising avenue for learning more about dark matter, but is hampered by the frequent coincidence of high-energy astrophysical sources of such particles with putative high-density regions of dark matter. We calculate the boost factor and gamma-ray flux from dark matter associated with two shell-like caustics of luminous tidal debris recently discovered around the Andromeda galaxy, under the assumption that dark matter is its own supersymmetric antiparticle. These shell features could be a good candidate for indirect detection of dark matter via gamma rays because they are located far from the primary confusion sources at the galaxy's center, and because the shapes of the shells indicate that most of the mass has piled up near apocenter. Using a numerical estimator specifically calibrated to estimate densities in N-body representations with sharp features and a previously determined N-body model of the shells, we find that the largest boost factors do occur in the shells but are only a few percent. We also find that the gamma-ray flux is an order of magnitude too low to be detected with Fermi for likely dark matter parameters, and about 2 orders of magnitude less than the signal that would have come from the dwarf galaxy that produces the shells in the N-body model. We further show that the radial density profiles and relative radial spacing of the shells, in either dark or luminous matter, is relatively insensitive to the details of the potential of the host galaxy but depends in a predictable way on the velocity dispersion of the progenitor galaxy.