Prospects for Indirect Dark Matter Searches with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA)

Understand

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will have a unique chance of discovery for a large range of masses in Weakly Interacting Massive Particles models of dark matter.

• The principal target for dark matter searches with CTA is the centre of the Galactic Halo.
• The best strategy is to perform CTA observations within a few degrees of the Galactic Centre, with the Galactic Centre itself and the most intense diffuse emission regions removed from the analysis.
• Assuming a cuspy dark matter density profile for the Milky Way, 500 hours of observations in this region provide sensitivities to and below the thermal cross-section of dark matter annihilations, for masses between a few hundred GeV and a few tens of TeV; therefore CTA will have a significant chance of discovery in some models.