Hunting for dark matter subhalos among the Fermi-LAT sources with VERITAS

Understand

The distribution of dark matter in the Galaxy, according to state-of-the-art simulations, shows not only a smooth halo component but also a rich substructure where a hierarchy of dark matter subhalos of different masses is found.

• We present a search for potential dark matter subhalos in our Galaxy exploiting the high (HE, 100 MeV -- 100 GeV) and very-high-energy (VHE, >100 GeV) gamma-ray bands.
• We assume a scenario where the dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles of mass over 100 GeV, and is capable of self-annihilation into standard model products.
• Under such a hypothesis, most of the photons created by the annihilation of dark matter particles are predicted to lay in the HE gamma-ray band, where the Fermi-Large Area Telescope is the most sensitive instrument to date.