Could the Fermi-LAT detect gamma-rays from dark matter annihilation in the dwarf galaxies of the Local Group?

Understand

The detection of gamma-rays from dark matter (DM) annihilation is among the scientific goals of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (formerly known as GLAST) and Cherenkov telescopes.

• In this paper we investigate the existence of realistic chances of such a discovery selecting some nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) as a target.
• We study the detectability with the Fermi-LAT of the gamma-ray flux from DM annihilation in Draco, Ursa Minor, Carina, and Sextans, for which the state-of-art DM density profiles were available.
• We assume the DM is made of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles such as the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) and compute the expected gamma-ray flux for optimistic choices of the unknown underlying particle physics parameters.