Gamma Ray Signals from Dark Matter

A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2021) | Viewed by 1675

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NX 87545, USA
Interests: gamma rays; dark matter

Special Issue Information

Evidence of the existence of dark matter has been mounting for almost 100 years. Strong indications of dark matter’s gravitational influence on our universe range from dwarf galaxies to Large Scale Structure. Most modern theories propose that dark matter is a fundamental particle; however, dark matter’s particle nature remains a mystery. Dark matter cannot be a particle found in the Standard Model, and therefore evidence of interactions between particles and dark matter would be evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Several such interactions are expected to produce gamma rays. Since gamma rays point back to their cosmic sources, one often looks for an excess gamma-ray signal from dark-matter-rich targets like dwarf galaxies and the Galactic Center. So far, no conclusive signals have been detected, but current and future experiments are already probing and will probe the most promising dark matter models.

This Special Issue will focus on all aspects of searching for dark matter using cosmic gamma rays. This includes the modeling of the dark matter distribution in targets, current and future experimental searches for gamma rays from dark matter, and theories beyond the Standard Model that predict expected gamma-ray signals from dark matter.

Dr. Andrea Albert
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

7 pages, 355 KiB  
Article
On a Possible Origin of the Gamma-ray Excess around the Galactic Center
by Dmitry O. Chernyshov, Andrei E. Egorov, Vladimir A. Dogiel and Alexei V. Ivlev
Symmetry 2021, 13(8), 1432; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13081432 - 5 Aug 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1413
Abstract
Recent observations of gamma rays with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the direction of the inner galaxy revealed a mysterious excess of GeV. Its intensity is significantly above predictions of the standard model of cosmic rays (CRs) generation and propagation with [...] Read more.
Recent observations of gamma rays with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the direction of the inner galaxy revealed a mysterious excess of GeV. Its intensity is significantly above predictions of the standard model of cosmic rays (CRs) generation and propagation with a peak in the spectrum around a few GeV. Popular interpretations of this excess are that it is due to either spherically distributed annihilating dark matter (DM) or an abnormal population of millisecond pulsars. We suggest an alternative explanation of the excess through the CR interactions with molecular clouds in the Galactic Center (GC) region. We assumed that the excess could be imitated by the emission of molecular clouds with depleted density of CRs with energies below ∼10 GeV inside. A novelty of our work is in detailed elaboration of the depletion mechanism of CRs with the mentioned energies through the “barrier” near the cloud edge formed by the self-excited MHD turbulence. This depletion of CRs inside the clouds may be a reason for the deficit of gamma rays from the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at energies below a few GeV. This in turn changes the ratio between various emission components at those energies and may potentially absorb the GeV excess by a simple renormalization of key components. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gamma Ray Signals from Dark Matter)
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