http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.03509
Dwarf spheroidals are low-luminosity satellite galaxies of the Milky Way highly dominated by dark matter. Therefore, they are prime targets to search for signals from dark matter annihilation using gamma-ray observations. We analyse about 7 years of PASS8 Fermi data for seven classical dwarf galaxies, including Draco, adopting both the widely used Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile and observationally motivated axisymmetric density profiles. For four of the selected dwarfs (Sextans, Carina, Sculptor and Fornax) axisymmetric mass models suggest a cored density profile rather than the commonly adopted cusped profile. We found that upper limits on the annihilation cross section for some of these dwarfs are significantly higher than the ones achieved using an NFW profile. Therefore, upper limits in the literature obtained using cusped profiles like the NFW might have been overestimated. Our results eventually show that it is extremely important to use observationally motivated density profiles going beyond the usually adopted NFW in order to obtain accurate constraints on the dark matter annihilation cross section.
N. Klop, F. Zandanel, K. Hayashi, et. al.
Tue, 13 Sep 16
47/91
Comments: 9 pages, 5 figures
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