Speaker
Eric Baxter
(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago)
Description
We present a new technique for using gamma-ray data to constrain the properties of
dark matter that makes minimal assumptions about the dark matter and the backgrounds.
The technique relies on two properties of the expected signal from annihilations of
the smooth dark matter component in our galaxy: 1) it is approximately rotationally
symmetric around the axis connecting us to the galactic center, and 2) variations
from the mean signal are uncorrelated from one pixel to the next. We apply this
technique to recent data from the Fermi telescope to generate constraints on the dark
matter mass and cross section for a variety of annihilation channels.
Primary author
Eric Baxter
(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago)
Co-author
Scott Dodelson
(Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago, Center for Particle Astrophysics, Fermilab, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, Chicago)
