The detectability of dark matter annihilation with Fermi using the anisotropy energy spectrum of the gamma-ray background

Understand

The energy-dependence of the anisotropy (the anisotropy energy spectrum) of the large-scale diffuse gamma-ray background can reveal the presence of multiple source populations.

• Annihilating dark matter in the substructure of the Milky Way halo could give rise to a modulation in the anisotropy energy spectrum of the diffuse gamma-ray emission measured by Fermi, enabling the detection of a dark matter signal.
• We determine the detectability of a dark-matter-induced modulation for scenarios in which unresolved blazars are the primary contributor to the measured emission above ~1 GeV and find that in some scenarios pair-annihilation cross sections of order the value expected for thermal relic dark matter can produce a detectable feature.
• We anticipate that the sensitivity of this technique to specific dark matter models could be improved by tailored likelihood analysis methods.