Sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array to a dark matter signal from the Galactic centre
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics IOP Publishing 01 (2021) 057
Authors:
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Consortium, A Acharyya, R Adam, C Adams, I Agudo, A Aguirre-Santaella, R Alfaro, J Alfaro, C Alispach, R Aloisio, R Alves Batista, L Amati, G Ambrosi, EO Angüner, LA Antonelli, C Aramo, A Araudo, T Armstrong, F Arqueros, K Asano, Y Ascasíbar, M Ashley, C Balazs, O Ballester, A Baquero Larriva, V Barbosa Martins, M Barkov, U Barres de Almeida, JA Barrio, D Bastieri, J Becerra, G Beck, J Becker Tjus, W Benbow, M Benito, D Berge, E Bernardini, K Bernlöhr, A Berti, B Bertucci, V Beshley, B Biasuzzi, A Biland, E Bissaldi, J Biteau, O Blanch, J Blazek, F Bocchino, C Boisson, L Bonneau Arbeletche, P Bordas, Z Bosnjak, E Bottacini, V Bozhilov, J Bregeon, A Brill, T Bringmann, AM Brown, P Brun, F Brun, P Bruno, A Bulgarelli, M Burton, A Burtovoi, M Buscemi, R Cameron, M Capasso, A Caproni, R Capuzzo-Dolcetta, P Caraveo, R Carosi, A Carosi, S Casanova, E Cascone, F Cassol, F Catalani, D Cauz, M Cerruti, P Chadwick, S Chaty, A Chen, M Chernyakova, G Chiaro, A Chiavassa, M Chikawa, J Chudoba, M Çolak, V Conforti, R Coniglione, F Conte, JL Contreras, J Coronado-Blazquez, A Costa, H Costantini, G Cotter, P Cristofari, A D'Aì, F D'Ammando, LA Damone, MK Daniel, F Dazzi, A De Angelis, V De Caprio, R de Cássia dos Anjos, EM de Gouveia Dal Pino, B De Lotto, D De Martino, E de Oña Wilhelmi, F De Palma, V de Souza, C Delgado, AG Delgado Giler, D della Volpe, D Depaoli, T Di Girolamo, F Di Pierro, L Di Venere, S Diebold, A Dmytriiev, A Domínguez, A Donini, M Doro, J Ebr, C Eckner, TDP Edwards, TRN Ekoume, D Elsässer, C Evoli, D Falceta-Goncalves, E Fedorova, S Fegan, Q Feng, G Ferrand, G Ferrara, E Fiandrini, A Fiasson, M Filipovic, V Fioretti, M Fiori, L Foffano, G Fontaine, O Fornieri, FJ Franco, S Fukami, Y Fukui, D Gaggero, G Galaz, V Gammaldi, E Garcia, M Garczarczyk, D Gascon, A Gent, A Ghalumyan, F Gianotti, M Giarrusso, G Giavitto, N Giglietto, F Giordano, A Giuliani, J Glicenstein, R Gnatyk, P Goldoni, MM González, K Gourgouliatos, J Granot, D Grasso, J Green, A Grillo, O Gueta, S Gunji, A Halim, T Hassan, M Heller, S Hernández Cadena, N Hiroshima, B Hnatyk, W Hofmann, J Holder, D Horan, J Hörandel, P Horvath, T Hovatta, M Hrabovsky, D Hrupec, G Hughes, TB Humensky, M Hütten, M Iarlori, T Inada, S Inoue, F Iocco, M Iori, M Jamrozy, P Janecek, W Jin, L Jouvin, J Jurysek, E Karukes, K Katarzyński, D Kazanas, D Kerszberg, MC Kherlakian, R Kissmann, J Knödlseder, Y Kobayashi, K Kohri, N Komin, H Kubo, J Kushida, G Lamanna, J Lapington, P Laporte, MA Leigui de Oliveira, J Lenain, F Leone, G Leto, E Lindfors, T Lohse, S Lombardi, F Longo, A Lopez, M López, R López-Coto, S Loporchio, PL Luque-Escamilla, E Mach, C Maggio, G Maier, M Mallamaci, R Malta Nunes de Almeida, D Mandat, M Manganaro, S Mangano, G Manicò, M Marculewicz, M Mariotti, S Markoff, P Marquez, J Martí, O Martinez, M Martínez, G Martínez, H Martínez-Huerta, G Maurin, D Mazin, JD Mbarubucyeye, D Medina Miranda, M Meyer, M Miceli, T Miener, M Minev, JM Miranda, R Mirzoyan, T Mizuno, B Mode, R Moderski, L Mohrmann, E Molina, T Montaruli, A Moralejo, D Morcuende-Parrilla, A Morselli, R Mukherjee, C Mundell, A Nagai, T Nakamori, R Nemmen, J Niemiec, D Nieto, M Nikołajuk, D Ninci, K Noda, D Nosek, S Nozaki, Y Ohira, M Ohishi, Y Ohtani, T Oka, A Okumura, RA Ong, M Orienti, R Orito, M Orlandini, S Orlando, E Orlando, M Ostrowski, I Oya, I Pagano, A Pagliaro, M Palatiello, FR Pantaleo, JM Paredes, G Pareschi, N Parmiggiani, B Patricelli, L Pavletić, A Pe'er, M Pecimotika, J Pérez-Romero, M Persic, O Petruk, K Pfrang, G Piano, P Piatteli, E Pietropaolo, R Pillera, B Pilszyk, F Pintore, M Pohl, V Poireau, RR Prado, E Prandini, J Prast, G Principe, H Prokoph, M Prouza, H Przybilski, G Pühlhofer, ML Pumo, F Queiroz, A Quirrenbach, S Rainò, R Rando, S Razzaque, S Recchia, O Reimer, A Reisenegger, Y Renier, W Rhode, D Ribeiro, M Ribó, T Richtler, J Rico, F Rieger, L Rinchiuso, V Rizi, J Rodriguez, G Rodriguez Fernandez, JC Rodriguez Ramirez, G Rojas, P Romano, G Romeo, J Rosado, G Rowell, B Rudak, F Russo, I Sadeh, E Sæther Hatlen, S Safi-Harb, F Salesa Greus, G Salina, D Sanchez, M Sánchez-Conde, P Sangiorgi, H Sano, M Santander, EM Santos, R Santos-Lima, A Sanuy, S Sarkar, FG Saturni, U Sawangwit, F Schussler, U Schwanke, E Sciacca, S Scuderi, M Seglar-Arroyo, O Sergijenko, M Servillat, K Seweryn, A Shalchi, P Sharma, RC Shellard, H Siejkowski, J Silk, C Siqueira, V Sliusar, A Słowikowska, A Sokolenko, H Sol, S Spencer, A Stamerra, S Stanič, R Starling, T Stolarczyk, U Straumann, J Strišković, Y Suda, T Suomijarvi, P Świerk, F Tavecchio, L Taylor, LA Tejedor, M Teshima, V Testa, L Tibaldo, CJ Todero Peixoto, F Tokanai, D Tonev, G Tosti, L Tosti, N Tothill, S Truzzi, P Travnicek, V Vagelli, B Vallage, P Vallania, C van Eldik, J Vandenbroucke, GS Varner, V Vassiliev, M Vázquez Acosta, M Vecchi, S Ventura, S Vercellone, S Vergani, G Verna, A Viana, CF Vigorito, J Vink, V Vitale, S Vorobiov, I Vovk, T Vuillaume, SJ Wagner, R Walter, J Watson, C Weniger, R White, M White, R Wiemann, A Wierzcholska, M Will, DA Williams, R Wischnewski, S Yanagita, L Yang, T Yoshikoshi, M Zacharias, G Zaharijas, AA Zakaria, L Zampieri, R Zanin, D Zaric, M Zavrtanik, D Zavrtanik, AA Zdziarski, A Zech, H Zechlin, L Zehrer, VI Zhdanov, M Živec
Abstract:
We provide an updated assessment of the power of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to search for thermally produced dark matter at the TeV scale, via the associated gamma-ray signal from pair-annihilating dark matter particles in the region around the Galactic centre. We find that CTA will open a new window of discovery potential, significantly extending the range of robustly testable models given a standard cuspy profile of the dark matter density distribution.
Importantly, even for a cored profile, the projected sensitivity of CTA will be
sufficient to probe various well-motivated models of thermally produced dark
matter at the TeV scale. This is due to CTA's unprecedented sensitivity,
angular and energy resolutions, and the planned observational strategy. The
survey of the inner Galaxy will cover a much larger region than corresponding
previous observational campaigns with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes.
CTA will map with unprecedented precision the large-scale diffuse emission in high-energy gamma rays, constituting a background for dark matter searches for which we adopt state-of-the-art models based on current data. Throughout our analysis, we use up-to-date event reconstruction Monte Carlo tools developed by the CTA consortium, and pay special attention to quantifying the level of instrumental systematic uncertainties, as well as background template systematic errors, required to probe thermally produced dark matter at these energies.