Uncertainties in measuring the dark matter signal from Milky Way satellites using Cherenkov telescopes

TL;DR

This paper models the uncertainties in detecting dark matter signals from Milky Way satellites with Cherenkov telescopes by exploring various substructure parameters and their impact on CTA sensitivity.

Contribution

It introduces ten different substructure models with varying parameters to assess their effects on dark matter signal detection with CTA.

Findings

No model could detect the thermal annihilation cross-section.

Systematic uncertainties significantly affect detection prospects.

Models show that detection is challenging under current sensitivities.

Abstract

In this work, we present a modelling of the galactic sub-clumps based on statistical estimations of the full Milky Way satellite population. We introduce 10 substructure modellings (SM$_{i}$, i $\in$ {1, . . . , 10}) with the following varying parameters: a) subhalos inner profile, b) spatial distribution of subhalos, c) mass distribution of subhalos, d) total number of subhalos and e) concentration parameter. The sensitivity curves of CTA for sources in each model are calculated for the $\tau^{+}\tau^{-}$ and $b\bar{b}$ annihilation channels. With both detection of a signal (5$\sigma$) with the CTA and no signal observation, no model was effective in accessing the thermal values of <$\sigma$ v>. We analyse the systematic effects introduced by the substructures models.