On the Detectability of Galactic Dark Matter Annihilation into Monochromatic Gamma-rays

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential to detect monochromatic gamma-rays from dark matter annihilation using a future space-based detector, considering various detector configurations and detection strategies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of detection strategies and detector performance for observing gamma-ray signals from neutralino dark matter in the galaxy.

Findings

Detection sensitivity depends on detector energy and angular resolution.

Galactic center observations offer higher detection prospects.

Scan mode enables broader halo coverage.

Abstract

Monochromatic gamma-rays are thought to be the smoking gun signal for identifying the dark matter annihilation. However, the flux of monochromatic gamma-rays is usually suppressed by the virtual quantum effects since dark matter should be neutral and does not couple with gamma-rays directly. In the work we study the detection strategy of the monochromatic gamma-rays in a future space-based detector. The monochromatic gamma-ray flux is calculated by assuming supersymmetric neutralino as a typical dark matter candidate. We discuss both the detection focusing on the Galactic center and in a scan mode which detects gamma-rays from the whole Galactic halo are compared. The detector performance for the purpose of monochromatic gamma-rays detection, with different energy and angular resolution, field of view, background rejection efficiencies, is carefully studied with both analytical and fast Monte-Carlo method.