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Published August 15, 2015 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Improved limits on sterile neutrino dark matter using full-sky Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor data

Abstract

A sterile neutrino of ∼keV mass is a well-motivated dark matter candidate. Its decay generates an x-ray line that offers a unique target for x-ray telescopes. For the first time, we use the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) onboard the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope to search for sterile neutrino decay lines; our analysis covers the energy range 10–25 keV (sterile neutrino mass 20–50 keV), which is inaccessible to x-ray and gamma-ray satellites such as Chandra, Suzaku, XMM-Newton, and INTEGRAL. The extremely wide field of view of the GBM enables a large fraction of the Milky Way dark matter halo to be probed. After implementing careful data cuts, we obtain ∼53 days of full-sky observational data. We observe an excess of photons towards the Galactic center, as expected from astrophysical emission. We search for sterile neutrino decay lines in the energy spectrum, and find no significant signal. From this, we obtain upper limits on the sterile neutrino mixing angle as a function of mass. In the sterile neutrino mass range 25–40 keV, we improve upon previous upper limits by approximately an order of magnitude. Better understanding of detector and astrophysical backgrounds, as well as detector response, will further improve the sensitivity of a search with the GBM.

Additional Information

© 2015 American Physical Society. Received 21 May 2015; published 4 August 2015. We especially thank John Beacom for many helpful comments throughout the course of this work. We thank Shirley Li for helpful comments and lending CPU power, and Mark Finger (Universities Space Research Association Huntsville) for providing transient cuts for the GBM data. This work is supported by NASA Grant No. NNX11AO46G. K. C. Y. N. was supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1101216 and PHY-1404311 to John Beacom. S. H. was supported by a Research Fellowship for Research Abroad by JSPS. J. G. acknowledges support from NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant No. PF1-120089 awarded by the Chandra x-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under Contract No. NAS8-03060.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevD.92.043503.pdf

Submitted - 1504.04027v2.pdf

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