Dark Matter Decay and the Abundance of Ultracompact Minihalos

TL;DR

This paper investigates gamma-ray signals from ultracompact minihalos caused by dark matter decay, analyzing how decay channels and density profiles influence constraints on their abundance, which is crucial for understanding small-scale cosmological perturbations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of gamma-ray signals from ultracompact minihalos due to dark matter decay, considering various decay channels and density profiles, which was less explored in prior work.

Findings

Constraints on ultracompact minihalo abundance derived from gamma-ray observations.

Decay channels significantly affect the gamma-ray signals and resulting constraints.

Density profile variations alter the predicted gamma-ray fluxes.

Abstract

Ultracompact minihalos would be formed if there are larger density perturbations ($0.0003 < \delta\rho/\rho < 0.3$) in the earlier epoch. The density profile of them is steeper than the standard dark matter halos. If the dark matter can annihilate or decay into the standard particles, e.g., photons, these objects would be the potential astrophysical sources. In order to be consistent with the observations, such as $Fermi$, the abundance of ultracompact minihalos must be constrained. On the other hand, the formation of these objects has very tight relation with the primordial curvature perturbations on smaller scale, so the fraction of ultracompact minihalos is very important for modern cosmology. In previous works, the studies are focused on the dark matter annihilation for these objects. But if the dark matter is not annihilated, the dark matter decay is another important possible case. On the other hand, the abundance of ultracompact minihalos is related to many other parameters, such as the mass of dark matter, the decay channels and the density profile of dark matter halo. One of the important aspects of this work is that we investigate the $\gamma$-ray signals from nearby ultracompact minihalos due to dark matter decay and another important aspect is to study in detail how the different decay channels and density profiles affect the constraints on the abundance of ultracompact minihalos.