Understand
A leading hypothesis for the nature of the elusive dark matter are thermally produced, weakly interacting massive particles that arise in many theories beyond the standard model of particle physics.
- Their self-annihilation in astrophysical regions of high density provides a potential means of indirectly detecting dark matter through the annihilation products, which nicely complements direct and collider searches.
- Here, I review the case of gamma rays which are particularly promising in this respect: distinct and unambiguous spectral signatures would not only allow a clear discrimination from astrophysical backgrounds but also to extract important properties of the dark matter particles; powerful observational facilities like the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope or upcoming large, ground-based Cherenkov telescope arrays will be able to probe a considerable part of the underlying, e.g.
- supersymmetric, parameter space.