Cosmological Dark Matter and the Isotropic Gamma-Ray Background : Measurements and Upper Limits

• This thesis addresses the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background, as measured by the Fermi gamma ray space telescope, and its implications for indirect detection of dark matter. We describe the measurement of the isotropic background, including also an alternative analysis method besides the one published by the Fermi-LAT collaboration. The measured isotropic diffuse background is compatible with a power law differential energy spectrum with a spectral index of  -2.41 ± 0.05 and -2.39 ± 0.08, for the two analysis methods respectively. This is a softer spectrum than previously reported by the EGRET experiment. This rules out any dominant contribution with a significantly different shape, e.g. from dark matter, in the energy range 20 MeV to 102.4 GeV. Instead we present upper limits on a signal originating from annihilating dark matter of extragalactic origin. The uncertainty in the dark matter signal is primarily dependent on the cosmological evolution of the dark matter distribution. We use recent N-body simulations of structure formation, as well as a semi-analytical calculation, to assess this uncertainty. We investigate three main annihilation channels and find that in some, but not in all, of our scenarios we can start to probe, and sometimes rule out, interesting parameter spaces of particle physics models beyond the standard model.We also investigate the possibility to use the angular anisotropies of the annihilation signal to separate it from a background originating from conventional sources, e.g. from active galactic nuclei. By carefully modelling the performance of the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope and galactic foregrounds we find that this method could be as sensitive as using information from the energy spectrum only.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Subatomär fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Subatomic Physics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

dark matter theory

dark matter simulations

dark matter experiments

isotropic gamma-ray background

Fermi gamma-ray space telescope

Astroparticle physics

Astropartikelfysik

teoretisk fysik

Theoretical Physics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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