Looking into the dark: the present status of gamma-ray dark matter searches

por Miguel Angel Sanchez-Conde (SLAC Menlo Park, USA)

miércoles 24 abr. 2013 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios IFIC (Edf. Institutos de Investigación)

In the standard cosmology, non-baryonic cold dark matter (DM) constitutes nearly 85% of the total matter content in the Universe. However, its detection remains still challenging, despite the fact that a huge battery of experiments are currently ongoing that try to search for DM using different techniques. In this talk, I will overview the present status of DM searches in gamma-rays, namely those being carried out by Cherenkov telescopes from the ground and, very specially, those performed by the NASA Fermi satellite, which has been extensively searching for DM-induced gamma-rays since its launch in 2008. Indeed, Fermi results have made significant inroads in limiting the standard “WIMP miracle” DM scenario, providing the most stringent limits in the DM annihilation cross section so far. Several astrophysical objects have been studied in this context, each of them having deserved different search strategies and data analysis. In this talk, I will review the current status of the field and will briefly discuss projections for future Fermi measurements as well as for the future Cherenkov Telescope Array.