A Robust Approach to Constraining Dark Matter from Gamma-Ray Data

Understand

Photons produced in the annihilations of dark matter particles can be detected by gamma-ray telescopes; this technique of indirect detection serves as a cornerstone of the upcoming assault on the dark matter paradigm.

• The main obstacle to the extraction of information about dark matter from the annihilation photons is the presence of large and uncertain gamma-ray backgrounds.
• We present a new technique for using gamma-ray data to constrain the properties of dark matter that makes minimal assumptions about the dark matter and the backgrounds.
• The technique relies on two properties of the expected signal from annihilations of the smooth dark matter component in our galaxy: 1) it is approximately rotationally symmetric around the axis connecting us to the Galactic Center, and 2) variations from the mean signal are uncorrelated from one pixel to the next.