This book summarizes the evidence for dark matter and what we can learn about its particle nature using cosmic gamma rays. Overwhelming evidence suggests 95% of the Universe’s energy density doesn’t fit within our Standard Model of particle physics…most of the cosmos is filled with dark energy and dark matter. This book reviews results from recent experiments using gamma rays including anomalies some have attributed to dark matter. It also discusses how our observations complement other dark matter searchers and prospects for future experiments.
It has almost been 100 years since Fritz Zwicky first detected hints that most of the matter in the Universe doesn’t directly emit or reflect light. Since then, the observational evidence for dark matter has continued to grow. Dark matter may be a new kind of particle that is governed by physics beyond our Standard Model of particle physics. In many models, dark matter annihilation or decay produces gamma rays. There are a variety of instruments observing the gamma-ray sky from tens of MeV to hundreds of TeV. Some make deep, focused observations of small regions, while others provide coverage of the entire sky. Each experiment offers complementary sensitivity to dark matter searches in a variety of target sizes, locations, and dark matter mass scales. We review results from recent gamma-ray experiments including anomalies some have attributed to dark matter. We also discuss how our gamma-ray observations complement other dark matter searches and the prospects for future experiments.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Observational and Theoretical Motivation for Particle Dark Matter
3 Investigating Dark Matter with Cosmic Gamma rays
4 Recent Results and Unexplained Anomalies from Gamma-ray Dark Matter Searches
5 Future Outlook
Bibliography
Conclusion
About the Author(s)
Andrea Albert, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Andrea Albert is the Marie Curie Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As a member of the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration and the High Altitude Cherenkov (HAWC) Collaboration, she studies high-energy gamma rays and searches for new signals from exotic phenomena like particle dark matter interactions in space. She received her PhD in physics from The Ohio State University in 2013.
