We used radio observations of the neighbour galaxy M31 in order to put constraints on dark matter particle mass and annihilation cross section. Dark matter annihilation in M31 halo produces highly energetic leptons, which emit synchrotron radiation o
n radio frequencies in the galactic magnetic field. We predicted expected radio fluxes for the two annihilation channels: chichi -> bb* and chichi -> tau^+tau^-. We then compared them with available data on the central radio emission of M31 as observed by four radio surveys: VLSS (74 MHz), WENSS (325 MHz), NVSS (1400 MHz) and GB6 (4850 MHz). Assuming a standard NFW dark matter density profile and a conservative magnetic field distribution inside the Andromeda galaxy, we find that the thermal relic annihilation cross section <sigma v> = 3*10^{-26} cm^3/s or higher are only allowed for WIMP masses greater than 100 GeV and 55 GeV for annihilation into bb* and tau^+tau^- respectively. Taking into account potential uncertainties in the distributions of DM density and magnetic field, the mentioned WIMP limiting masses can be as low as 23 GeV for both channels, and as high as 280 and 130 GeV for annihilation into bb* and tau^+tau^- respectively. These mass values exceed the best up-to-day known constraints from Fermi gamma observations: 40 GeV and 19 GeV respectively [A.Geringer-Sameth and S.M.Koushiappas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 241303 (2011)]. Precise measurements of the magnetic field in the relevant region and better reconstruction of the DM density profile of M31 will be able to reduce the uncertainties of our exclusion limits.
We compute the cross correlation of the intensity and polarisation from the 5-year WMAP data in different sky-regions with respect to template maps for synchrotron, dust, and free-free emission. We derive the frequency dependence and polarisation fra
ction for all three components in 48 different sky regions of HEALPix (Nside=2) pixelisation. The anomalous emission associated with dust is clearly detected in intensity over the entire sky at the K (23 GHz) and Ka (33 GHz) WMAP bands, and is found to be the dominant foreground at low Galactic latitude, between b=-40 and b=+10. The synchrotron spectral index obtained from the K and Ka WMAP bands from an all-sky analysis is -3.32pm 0.12 for intensity and -3.01pm0.03 for the polarised intensity. The polarisation fraction of the synchrotron is constant in frequency and increases with latitude from ~5% near the Galactic plane up to ~40% in some regions at high latitude; the average value for |b|<20 is 8.6pm1.7 (stat) pm0.5 (sys) % while for |b|>20 it is 19.3pm0.8 (stat) pm 0.5 (sys) %. Anomalous dust and free-free emission appear to be relatively unpolarised...[Abridged]...the average polarisation fraction of dust-correlated emission at K-band is 3.2pm0.9 (stat) pm 1.5 (sys) %, or less than 5% at 95% confidence. When comparing real data with simulations, 8 regions show a detected polarisation above the 99th percentile of the distribution from simulations with no input foreground polarisation, 6 of which are detected at above 2sigma and display polarisation fractions between 2.6% and 7.2%, except for one anomalous region, which has 32pm12%. The dust polarisation values are consistent with the expectation from spinning-dust emission, but polarised dust emission from magnetic-dipole radiation cannot be ruled out. Free-free emission was found to be unpolarised with an upper limit of 3.4% at 95% confidence.
