Revisiting the constraints on annihilating dark matter by radio observational data of M31

TL;DR

This study derives new, tighter constraints on dark matter annihilation parameters using radio data from M31, challenging popular models explaining the Milky Way gamma-ray excess.

Contribution

It provides the first constraints on six annihilation channels from M31 radio data, improving upon previous gamma-ray based limits.

Findings

Lower mass limits for dark matter particles are 80-90 GeV.

Constraints are tighter than those from Fermi gamma-ray observations.

Results disfavor popular dark matter models explaining the Milky Way gamma-ray excess.

Abstract

Recent gamma-ray observations and radio observations put strong constraints on the parameters of dark matter annihilation. In this article, we derive new constraints for six standard model annihilation channels by using the recent radio data of M31 galaxy. The new constraints are generally tighter than the constraints obtained from 6 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray observations of the Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies. The conservative lower limits of dark matter mass annihilating via $b\bar{b}$, $\mu^+\mu^-$ and $\tau^+\tau^-$ channels are 90 GeV, 90 GeV and 80 GeV respectively with the canonical thermal relic cross section and the Burkert profile being the dark matter density profile. Hence, our results do not favor the most popular models of the dark matter interpretation of the Milky Way GeV gamma-ray excess.