Spherical Jeans analysis for dark matter indirect detection in dwarf spheroidal galaxies - Impact of physical parameters and triaxiality

Understand

Dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies are among the most promising targets for the indirect detection of dark matter (DM) from annihilation and/or decay products.

• Empirical estimates of their DM content - and hence the magnitudes of expected signals - rely on inferences from stellar-kinematic data.
• However, various kinematic analyses can give different results and it is not obvious which are most reliable.
• Using extensive sets of mock data of various sizes (mimicking 'ultra-faint' and 'classical' dSphs) and an MCMC engine, here we investigate biases, uncertainties, and limitations of analyses based on parametric solutions to the spherical Jeans equation.