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Thomas Lacroix

Publications and source records attributed to Thomas Lacroix.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Connecting the new H.E.S.S. diffuse emission at the Galactic center with the Fermi GeV excess: a combination of millisecond pulsars and heavy dark matter?

The H.E.S.S. collaboration has reported a high-energy spherically symmetric diffuse gamma-ray emission in the inner 50 pc of the Milky Way, up to ~ 50 TeV. Here we propose a leptonic model which provides an alternative to the hadronic scenario presented by the H.E.S.S. collaboration, and connects the newly reported TeV emission to the Fermi-LAT Galactic center GeV excess. Our model relies on a combination of inverse Compton emission from a population of millisecond pulsars---which can account for the GeV excess---and a supermassive black hole-induced spike of heavy (~ 60 TeV) dark matter particles annihilating into electrons with a sub-thermal cross-section. With an up-to-date interstellar radiation field, as well as a standard magnetic field and diffusion set-up, our model accounts for the spectral morphology of the detected emission. Moreover, we show that the dark matter induced emission reproduces the spatial morphology of the H.E.S.S. signal above ~ 10 TeV, while we obtain a slightly more extended component from pulsars at lower energies, which could be used as a prediction for future H.E.S.S. observations.

astro-ph.HE↗

The Spatial Morphology of the Secondary Emission in the Galactic Center Gamma-Ray Excess

Excess GeV gamma rays from the Galactic Center (GC) have been measured with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). The presence of the GC excess (GCE) appears to be robust with respect to changes in the diffuse galactic background modeling. The three main proposals for the GCE are an unresolved population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs), outbursts of cosmic rays from the GC region, and self-annihilating dark matter (DM). The injection of secondary electrons and positrons into the interstellar medium (ISM) by an unresolved population of MSPs or DM annihilations can lead to observable gamma-ray emission via inverse Compton scattering or bremsstrahlung. Here we investigate how to determine whether secondaries are important in a model for the GCE. We develop a method of testing model fit which accounts for the different spatial morphologies of the secondary emission. We examine several models which give secondary emission and illustrate a case where a broadband analysis is not sufficient to determine the need for secondary emission.

astro-ph.HE↗

Ruling out thermal dark matter with a black hole induced spiky profile in the M87 galaxy

Using the spectral energy distribution of M87, a nearby radio galaxy in the Virgo cluster, and assuming a supermassive black hole induced spike in the dark matter halo profile, we exclude any dark matter candidate with a velocity-independent (s-wave) annihilation cross-section of the order of sigma v ~ 10^{-26} cm^3/s and a mass up to O(100) TeV. These limits supersede all previous constraints on thermal, s-wave, annihilating dark matter candidates by orders of magnitude, and rule out the entire canonical mass range. We remark in addition that, under the assumption of a spike, dark matter particles with a mass of a few TeV and an annihilation cross-section of ~ 10^{-27} cm^3/s could explain the TeV gamma-ray emission observed in M87. A central dark matter spike is plausibly present around the supermassive black hole at the center of M87, for various, although not all, formation scenarios, and would have profound implications for our understanding of the dark matter microphysics.

astro-ph.GA↗

Fitting the Fermi-LAT GeV excess: on the importance of the propagation of electrons from dark matter

An excess of gamma rays at GeV energies has been detected in the Fermi-LAT data. This signal comes from a narrow region around the Galactic Center and has been interpreted as possible evidence for light (30 GeV) dark matter particles. Focussing on the prompt gamma-ray emission, previous works found that the best fit to the data corresponds to annihilations proceeding into b quarks, with a dark matter profile going as r^{-1.2}. We show that this is not the only possible annihilation set-up. More specifically, we show how including the contributions to the gamma-ray spectrum from inverse Compton scattering and bremsstrahlung from electrons produced in dark matter annihilations, and undergoing diffusion through the Galactic magnetic field, significantly affects the spectrum for leptonic final states. This drastically changes the interpretation of the excess in terms of dark matter.

astro-ph.HE↗

Fitting the Fermi-LAT GeV excess: On the importance of including the propagation of electrons from dark matter

An excess of gamma rays at GeV energies has been pointed out in the Fermi-LAT data. This signal comes from a narrow region centred around the Galactic center and has been interpreted as possible evidence for light dark matter particles annihilating either into a mixture of leptons-antileptons and b-bbar or into b-bbar only. Focusing on the prompt gamma-ray emission, previous works found that the best fit to the data corresponds to annihilations proceeding predominantly into b-bbar. However, here we show that omitting the photon emission originating from primary and secondary electrons produced in dark matter annihilations, and undergoing diffusion through the Galactic magnetic field, can actually lead to the wrong conclusion. Accounting for this emission, we find that not only are annihilations of ~ 10 GeV particles into a purely leptonic final state allowed, but the democratic scenario actually provides a better fit to the spectrum of the excess than the pure b-bbar channel. We conclude our work with a discussion on constraints on these leptophilic scenarios based on the AMS data and the morphology of the excess.

astro-ph.HE↗

A possible link between the GeV excess and the 511 keV emission line in the Galactic Centre

The morphology and characteristics of the so-called GeV gamma-ray excess detected in the Milky Way lead us to speculate about a possible common origin with the 511 keV line mapped by the SPI experiment about ten years ago. In the previous version of our paper, we assumed 30 GeV dark matter particles annihilating into $b \bar{b}$ and obtained both a morphology and a 511 keV flux (ϕ_{511 keV} ~ 10^{-3} ph/cm^2/s) in agreement with SPI observation. However our estimates assumed a negligible number density of electrons in the bulge which lead to an artificial increase in the flux (mostly due to negligible Coulomb losses in this configuration). Assuming a number density greater than $n_e > 10^{-3} cm^{-3}$, we now obtain a flux of 511 keV photons that is smaller than ϕ_{511 keV} ~ 10^{-6} ph/cm^2/s and is essentially in agreement with the 511 keV flux that one can infer from the total number of positrons injected by dark matter annihilations into $b \bar{b}$. We thus conclude that -- even if 30 GeV dark matter particles were to exist-- it is impossible to establish a connexion between the two types of signals, even though they are located within the same 10 deg region in the galactic centre.

astro-ph.HE↗

Probing a dark matter density spike at the Galactic Center

The dark matter halo profile in the inner Galaxy is very uncertain. Yet its radial dependence toward the Galactic Center is of crucial importance for the determination of the gamma-ray and radio fluxes originating from dark matter annihilations. Here we use synchrotron emission to probe the dark matter energy distribution in the inner Galaxy. We first solve the problem of the cosmic ray diffusion on very small scales, typically smaller than 10^{-3} pc, by using a Green's function approach and use this technique to quantify the effect of a spiky profile (rho(r) ~ r^{-7/3}) on the morphology and intensity of the synchrotron emission expected from dark matter. We illustrate our results using 10 and 800 GeV candidate weakly interacting dark matter particles annihilating directly into e+ e-. Our most critical assumptions are that the dark matter is heavier than a few GeV and directly produces a reasonable amount of electrons and positrons in the Galaxy. We conclude that dark matter indirect detection techniques (including the Planck experiment) could be used to shed light on the dark matter halo profile on scales that lie beyond the capability of any current numerical simulations.

astro-ph.HE↗

Constraining the distribution of dark matter at the Galactic centre using the high-resolution Event Horizon Telescope

We investigate constraints on the distribution of dark matter in the neighbourhood of the Galactic centre that may eventually be attained with the high-resolution Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The shadow of a black hole in vacuum is used to generate a toy model describing how dark matter affects the size of the shadow of the supermassive black hole located at the Galactic centre. Observations by the EHT may constrain the properties of the dark matter distribution in a possible density spike around the black hole. Current uncertainties due to both the resolution of the telescope and the analysis of stellar orbits prevent one from discerning the effect of dark matter on the measured size of the shadow. The change in the size of the shadow induced by dark matter can be seen as an additional uncertainty in any test of general relativity that relies on using the angular size of the shadow to estimate the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole.

astro-ph.GA↗

The XENON100 exclusion limit without considering Leff as a nuisance parameter

In 2011, the XENON100 experiment has set unprecedented constraints on dark matter-nucleon interactions, excluding dark matter candidates with masses down to 6 GeV if the corresponding cross section is larger than 10^{-39} cm^2. The dependence of the exclusion limit in terms of the scintillation efficiency (Leff) has been debated at length. To overcome possible criticisms XENON100 performed an analysis in which Leff was considered as a nuisance parameter and its uncertainties were profiled out by using a Gaussian likelihood in which the mean value corresponds to the best fit Leff value smoothly extrapolated to zero below 3 keVnr. Although such a method seems fairly robust, it does not account for more extreme types of extrapolation nor does it enable to anticipate on how much the exclusion limit would vary if new data were to support a flat behaviour for Leff below 3 keVnr, for example. Yet, such a question is crucial for light dark matter models which are close to the published XENON100 limit. To answer this issue, we use a maximum Likelihood ratio analysis, as done by the XENON100 collaboration, but do not consider Leff as a nuisance parameter. Instead, Leff is obtained directly from the fits to the data. This enables us to define frequentist confidence intervals by marginalising over Leff.

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