No Arabic abstract
In these proceedings we summarize the current status of the study of the sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to detect diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Perseus galaxy cluster. Gamma-ray emission is expected in galaxy clusters both from interactions of cosmic rays (CR) with the intra-cluster medium, or as a product of annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM) particles in case they are weakly interactive massive particles (WIMPs). The observation of Perseus has been proposed as one of the CTA Key Science Projects. In this contribution, we focus on the DM-induced component of the flux. Our DM modelling includes the substructures we expect in the main halo which will boost the annihilation signal significantly. We adopt an ON/OFF observation strategy and simulate the expected gamma-ray signals. Finally we compute the expected CTA sensitivity using a likelihood maximization analysis including the most recent CTA instrument response functions. In absence of signal, we show that CTA will allow us to provide stringent and competitive constraints on TeV DM, especially for the case of DM decay.
We investigate the possibility of detection of the VHE gamma-ray counterparts to the neutrino astrophysical sources within the Neutrino Target of Opportunity (NToO) program of CTA using the populations simulated by the FIRESONG software to resemble the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux measured by IceCube. We derive the detection probability for different zenith angles and geomagnetic field configurations. The difference in detectability of sources between CTA-North and CTA-South for the average geomagnetic field is not substantial. We investigate the effect of a higher night-sky background and the preliminary CTA Alpha layout on the detection probability.
(abridged) The Galactic Center is one of the most promising targets for indirect detection of dark matter with gamma rays. We investigate the sensitivity of the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to dark matter annihilation and decay in the Galactic Center. As the inner density profile of the Milky Ways dark matter halo is uncertain, we study the impact of the slope of the Galactic density profile, inwards of the Sun, on the prospects for detecting a dark matter signal with CTA. We find that the sensitivity achieved by CTA to annihilation signals is strongly dependent on the inner profile slope, whereas the dependence is more mild in the case of dark matter decay. Surprisingly, we find that the optimal choice of signal and background regions is virtually independent of the assumed density profile. For the fiducial case of a Navarro-Frenk-White profile, we find that CTA will be able to probe annihilation cross sections well below the canonical thermal relic value for dark matter masses from a few tens of GeV up to $sim 5$ TeV for annihilation to $tau^{+}tau^{-}$, and will achieve only a slightly weaker sensitivity for annihilation to $bbar{b}$ or $mu^{+}mu^{-}$. CTA will improve significantly on current sensitivity to annihilation signals for dark matter masses above $sim 100$ GeV, covering parameter space that is complementary to that probed by searches with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The interpretation of apparent excesses in the measured cosmic-ray electron and positron spectra as signals of dark matter decay will also be testable with CTA observations of the Galactic Center. We demonstrate that both for annihilation and for decay, including spectral information for hard channels (such as $mu^{+}mu^{-}$ and $tau^{+}tau^{-}$) leads to enhanced sensitivity for dark matter masses above $m_{rm DM}sim 200$ GeV.
Galaxy clusters are predicted to produce gamma-rays through cosmic ray interactions and/or dark matter annihilation, potentially detectable by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT). We present a new, independent stacking analysis of Fermi-LAT photon count maps using the 78 richest nearby clusters (z<0.12) from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) cluster catalog. We obtain the lowest limit on the photon flux to date, 2.3e-11 ph/s/cm^2 (95% confidence) per cluster in the 0.8-100 GeV band, which corresponds to a luminosity limit of 3.5e44 ph/s. We also constrain the emission limits in a range of narrower energy bands. Scaling to recent cosmic ray acceleration and gamma-ray emission models, we find that cosmic rays represent a negligible contribution to the intra-cluster energy density and gas pressure.
We report evidence for extended gamma-ray emission from the Virgo, Fornax and Coma clusters based on a maximum-likelihood analysis of the 3-year Fermi-LAT data. For all three clusters, excess emission is observed within three degrees of the center, peaking at the GeV scale. This emission cannot be accounted for by known Fermi sources or by the galactic and extragalactic backgrounds. If interpreted as annihilation emission from supersymmetric dark matter (DM) particles, the data prefer models with a particle mass in the range 20-60 GeV annihilating into the b-bbar channel, or 2-10 GeV and >1 TeV annihilating into mu-mu final states. Our results are consistent with those obtained by Hooper and Linden from a recent analysis of Fermi-LAT data in the region of the Galactic Centre. An extended DM annihilation profile dominated by emission from substructures is preferred over a simple point source model. The significance of DM detection is 4.4 sigma in Virgo and lower in the other two clusters. We also consider the possibility that the excess emission arises from cosmic ray (CR) induced gamma-rays, and infer a CR level within a factor of three of that expected from analytical models. However, the significance of a CR component is lower than the significance of a DM component, and there is no need for such a CR component in the presence of a DM component in the preferred DM mass range. We also set flux and cross-section upper limits for DM annihilation into the b-bbar and mu-mu channels in all three clusters.
We report on the detection with the MAGIC telescopes of very high energy gamma-rays from IC 310, a head-tail radio galaxy in the Perseus galaxy cluster, observed during the interval November 2008 to February 2010. The Fermi satellite has also detected this galaxy. The source is detected by MAGIC at a high statistical significance of 7.6sigma in 20.6 hr of stereo data. The observed spectral energy distribution is flat with a differential spectral index of -2.00 pm 0.14. The mean flux above 300 GeV, between October 2009 and February 2010, (3.1 pm 0.5)x10^{-12} cm^{-2} s^{-1}, corresponds to (2.5 pm 0.4)% of Crab Nebula units. Only an upper limit, of 1.9% of Crab Nebula units above 300 GeV, was obtained with the 2008 data. This, together with strong hints (>3sigma) of flares in the middle of October and November 2009, implies that the emission is variable. The MAGIC results favour a scenario with the very high energy emission originating from the inner jet close to the central engine. More complicated models than a simple one-zone SSC scenario, e.g. multi-zone SSC, external Compton or hadronic, may be required to explain the very flat spectrum and its extension over more than three orders of magnitude in energy.