Dark Matter Subhalos In the Fermi First Source Catalog

Understand

The Milky Way's dark matter halo is thought to contain large numbers of smaller subhalos.

• These objects can contain very high densities of dark matter, and produce potentially observable fluxes of gamma rays.
• In this article, we study the gamma ray sources in the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope's recently published First Source Catalog, and attempt to determine whether this catalog might contain a population of dark matter subhalos.
• We find that, while approximately 20-60 of the catalog's unidentified sources could plausibly be dark matter subhalos, such a population cannot be clearly identified as such at this time.