No Arabic abstract
Observations of diffuse Galactic gamma ray emission (DGE) by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) allow a detailed study of cosmic rays and the interstellar medium. However, diffuse emission models of the inner Galaxy underpredict the Fermi-LAT data at energies above a few GeV and hint at possible non-astrophysical sources including dark matter (DM) annihilations or decays. We present a study of the possible emission components from DM using the high-resolution Via Lactea II N-body simulation of a Milky Way-sized DM halo. We generate full-sky maps of DM annihilation and decay signals that include modeling of the adiabatic contraction of the host density profile, Sommerfeld enhanced DM annihilations, $p$-wave annihilations, and decaying DM. We compare our results with the DGE models produced by the Fermi-LAT team over different sky regions, including the Galactic center, high Galactic latitudes, and the Galactic anti-center. This work provides possible templates to fit the observational data that includes the contribution of the subhalo population to DM gamma-ray emission, with the significance depending on the annihilation/decay channels and the Galactic regions being considered.
The first published Fermi large area telescope (Fermi-LAT) measurement of the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray emission is in good agreement with a single power law, and is not showing any signature of a dominant contribution from dark matter sources in the energy range from 20 to 100 GeV. We use the absolute size and spectral shape of this measured flux to derive cross section limits on three types of generic dark matter candidates: annihilating into quarks, charged leptons and monochromatic photons. Predicted gamma-ray fluxes from annihilating dark matter are strongly affected by the underlying distribution of dark matter, and by using different available results of matter structure formation we assess these uncertainties. We also quantify how the dark matter constraints depend on the assumed conventional backgrounds and on the Universes transparency to high-energy gamma-rays. In reasonable background and dark matter structure scenarios (but not in all scenarios we consider) it is possible to exclude models proposed to explain the excess of electrons and positrons measured by the Fermi-LAT and PAMELA experiments. Derived limits also start to probe cross sections expected from thermally produced relics (e.g. in minimal supersymmetry models) annihilating predominantly into quarks. For the monochromatic gamma-ray signature, the current measurement constrains only dark matter scenarios with very strong signals.
We calculate the diffuse $gamma$-ray emission due to the population of misaligned AGN (MAGN) unresolved by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the {it Fermi} Gamma-ray Space Telescope ({it Fermi}). A correlation between the $gamma$-ray luminosity and the radio-core luminosity is established and demonstrated to be physical by statistical tests, as well as compatible with upper limits based on {it Fermi}-LAT data for a large sample of radio-loud MAGN. We constrain the derived $gamma$-ray luminosity function by means of the source count distribution of the MAGN detected by the {it Fermi}-LAT. We finally estimate the diffuse $gamma$-ray flux due to the whole MAGN population which ranges from 10% up to nearly the entire measured Isotropic Gamma-Ray Background (IGRB). We evaluate also the room left to galactic DM at high latitudes ($>10^circ$), by taking into account the results on the MAGN together with the other significant galactic and extragalactic $gamma$-rays emitting sources.
Recent observations of the diffuse Galactic gamma-ray emission by the Fermi-LAT satellite have shown significant deviations from models which assume the same diffusion properties for cosmic rays (CR) throughout the Galaxy. We explore the possibility that a fraction of this diffuse Galactic emission could be due to hadronic interactions of CRs self-confined in the region around their sources. In fact, freshly accelerated CRs that diffuse away from the acceleration region can trigger the streaming instability able to amplify magnetic disturbance and to reduce the particle diffusion. When this happen, CRs are trapped in the near source region for a time longer than expected and an extended gamma-ray halo is produces around each source. Here we calculate the contribution to the diffuse gamma-ray background due to the overlap along lines of sight of several of these extended halos. We find that if the density of neutrals is low, the halos can account for a substantial fraction of the diffuse emission observed by Fermi-LAT, depending on the orientation of the line of sight with respect to the direction of the galactic center.
We have performed an analysis of the diffuse gamma-ray emission with the Fermi Large Area Telescope in the Milky Way Halo region searching for a signal from dark matter annihilation or decay. In the absence of a robust dark matter signal, constraints are presented. We consider both gamma rays produced directly in the dark matter annihilation/decay and produced by inverse Compton scattering of the e+e- produced in the annihilation/decay. Conservative limits are derived requiring that the dark matter signal does not exceed the observed diffuse gamma-ray emission. A second set of more stringent limits is derived based on modeling the foreground astrophysical diffuse emission using the GALPROP code. Uncertainties in the height of the diffusive cosmic-ray halo, the distribution of the cosmic-ray sources in the Galaxy, the index of the injection cosmic-ray electron spectrum and the column density of the interstellar gas are taken into account using a profile likelihood formalism, while the parameters governing the cosmic-ray propagation have been derived from fits to local cosmic-ray data. The resulting limits impact the range of particle masses over which dark matter thermal production in the early Universe is possible, and challenge the interpretation of the PAMELA/Fermi-LAT cosmic ray anomalies as annihilation of dark matter.
The events recorded by ARGO-YBJ in more than five years of data collection have been analyzed to determine the diffuse gamma-ray emission in the Galactic plane at Galactic longitudes 25{deg} < l < 100{deg} and Galactic latitudes . The energy range covered by this analysis, from ~350 GeV to ~2 TeV, allows the connection of the region explored by Fermi with the multi-TeV measurements carried out by Milagro. Our analysis has been focused on two selected regions of the Galactic plane, i.e., 40{deg} < l < 100{deg} and 65{deg} < l < 85{deg} (the Cygnus region), where Milagro observed an excess with respect to the predictions of current models. Great care has been taken in order to mask the most intense gamma-ray sources, including the TeV counterpart of the Cygnus cocoon recently identified by ARGO-YBJ, and to remove residual contributions. The ARGO-YBJ results do not show any excess at sub-TeV energies corresponding to the excess found by Milagro, and are consistent with the predictions of the Fermi model for the diffuse Galactic emission. From the measured energy distribution we derive spectral indices and the differential flux at 1 TeV of the diffuse gamma-ray emission in the sky regions investigated.