Karlsruhe 2011 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 87: Gammaastronomie I

T 87.5: Talk

Monday, March 28, 2011, 17:50–18:05, 30.41: 104

Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation from M87 — •Alexander Summa, Sheetal Saxena, Michael Rüger, Dominik Elsässer, and Karl Mannheim — Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg

Clusters of galaxies and their central cD galaxies are prime targets for observing indirect signatures of dark matter annihilation owing to their huge mass concentration. The main challenge is to discriminate between high-energy emission of different origins, for example the emission from active galactic nuclei as a result of accretion of mass by the supermassive black hole at the centre of the host galaxy and the emission due to dark matter annihilation. In addition to prompt gamma rays, dark matter annihilation products can include energetic electrons and positrons which inverse Compton scatter with the cosmic microwave background or with starlight photon fields to produce potentially detectable signals going from the soft to the hard X-ray energy band. In order to constrain the dark matter annihilation emission component, a state-of-the-art radiation code for the M87 jet emission and a generic description of the prompt and secondary inverse-Compton gamma rays due to generic weakly interacting dark matter particles are employed and possibilities for identifying the signatures of dark matter in the multi-wavelength spectrum of M87 are investigated.