# Secluded Dark Matter in light of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA)

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will significantly improve constraints on secluded dark matter models through gamma-ray observations, surpassing current bounds for masses above 400 GeV.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed projection of CTA's sensitivity to secluded dark matter annihilation, considering systematics and various dark sector scenarios.

## Key findings

- CTA will set the most stringent bounds on dark matter annihilation cross section above 400 GeV.
- CTA can exclude annihilation cross sections of 1.7×10⁻²⁵ cm³/s at 5 TeV mass.
- CTA's sensitivity exceeds current limits by about an order of magnitude.

## Abstract

Secluded dark matter is one of the most popular dark matter models, where dark matter annihilations go into particles that belong to a dark sector. An interesting way to probe such models is via indirect detection. In particular, gamma-ray observations are rather promising. Taking into account $1\%$ level of systematics, in this work we show that the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will place the most stringent bounds on the dark matter annihilation cross section, surpassing existing probes based on H.E.S.S., Fermi-LAT, and Planck data, for dark matter masses above $400$ GeV, independently of the channel and choosing the Einasto profile. We consider scenarios of secluded annihilations into leptophilic, leptophobic scalars and Higgs-like particles being able to exclude an annihilation cross section of $1.7 \times 10^{-25}$ cm$^3 \,$s$^{-1}$ for $m_{DM}=5000$ GeV, for $\phi \to e^+e^-$ channel, for example, exceeding the current limits by one order of magnitude.