Recent results from Atmoshperic Cherenkov Telescopes and Dark Matter

Abstract

Recent results on the detection of Gamma Rays (GR) from the center of the Milky Way and from the direction of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Draco, respectively reported by the HESS and CACTUS atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes collaborations, provide illustrative case-studies to test the possibility of indirectly detecting DarkMatter (DM) through its pair annihilation into photons. We show that in both cases, the DM interpretation of the GR fluxes points towards large pair annihilation cross sections, often close to the maximal theoretically allowed values in given DM models, such as the neutralino dark matter paradigm. The possibility of cross-checking such putative indirect detection signals with other DM search techniques, as well as with future GR detectors, is also addressed.

Additional details