Seen and unseen tidal caustics in the Andromeda galaxy
Robyn Ellyn Sanderson, Edmund Bertschinger

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…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
