1. Prospects of detecting gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters: Cosmic rays and dark matter annihilations
- Author
-
Lars Bergström, Christoph Pfrommer, and Anders Pinzke
- Subjects
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) ,Physics ,Nuclear and High Energy Physics ,Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Hot dark matter ,Dark matter ,Gamma ray ,Scalar field dark matter ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astronomy ,Cosmic ray ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Dark matter halo ,13. Climate action ,0103 physical sciences ,Dark galaxy ,Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,Galaxy cluster ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
We study the possibility for detecting gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters. We consider 1) leptophilic models of dark matter (DM) annihilation that include a Sommerfeld enhancement (SFE), 2) different representative benchmark models of supersymmetric DM, and 3) cosmic ray (CR) induced pion decay. Among all clusters/groups of a flux-limited X-ray sample, we predict Virgo, Fornax and M49 to be the brightest DM sources and find a particularly low CR-induced background for Fornax. For a minimum substructure mass given by the DM free-streaming scale, cluster halos maximize the substructure boost for which we find a factor above 1000. Since regions around the virial radius dominate the annihilation flux of substructures, the resulting surface brightness profiles are almost flat. This makes it very challenging to detect this flux with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Assuming cold dark matter with a substructure mass distribution down to an Earth mass and using extended Fermi upper limits, we rule out the leptophilic models in their present form in 28 clusters, and limit the boost from SFE in M49 and Fornax to be < 5. This corresponds to a limit on SFE in the Milky Way of < 3, which is too small to account for the increasing positron fraction with energy as seen by PAMELA and challenges the DM interpretation. Alternatively, if SFE is realized in Nature, this would imply a limiting substructure mass of M_lim > 10^4 M_sol - a problem for structure formation. Using individual cluster observations, it will be challenging for Fermi to constrain our selection of DM benchmark models without SFE. The Fermi upper limits are, however, closing in on our predictions for the CR flux using an analytic model based on cosmological hydrodynamical cluster simulations. We limit the CR-to-thermal pressure in nearby bright galaxy clusters of the Fermi sample to < 10% and in Norma and Coma to < 3%., 43 pages, 23 figures, 10 tables. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D: streamlined paper, added a paragraph about detectability to introduction, few references added, and few typos corrected
- Published
- 2011