Search for features in the cosmic-ray electron and positron spectrum measured by the Fermi Large Area Telescope

M. N. Mazziotta, F. Costanza, A. Cuoco, F. Gargano, F. Loparco, and S. Zimmer
Phys. Rev. D 98, 022006 – Published 10 July 2018

Abstract

The Large Area Telescope onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has collected the largest ever sample of high-energy cosmic-ray electron and positron events. Possible features in their energy spectrum could be a signature of the presence of nearby astrophysical sources or of more exotic sources, such as annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM) particles in the Galaxy. In this paper, for the first time we search for a deltalike line feature in the cosmic-ray electron and positron spectrum. We also search for a possible feature originating from DM particles annihilating into electron-positron pairs. Both searches yield negative results, but we are able to set constraints on the line intensity and on the velocity-averaged DM annihilation cross section. Our limits extend up to DM masses of 1.7TeV/c2 and exclude the thermal value of the annihilation cross section for DM lighter than 150GeV/c2.

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  • Received 11 December 2017
  • Revised 22 March 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.022006

© 2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

M. N. Mazziotta1,*, F. Costanza1,2, A. Cuoco3,4, F. Gargano1, F. Loparco1,5, and S. Zimmer6

  • 1Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bari, via Orabona 4, I-70126 Bari, Italy
  • 2CNRS - Laboratoire d’Annecy de Physique des Particules, 9 Chemin de Bellevue, F-74940 Annecy, France
  • 3RWTH Aachen University, Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology (TTK), D-52056 Aachen, Germany
  • 4Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino, via Pietro Giuria 1, I-10125 Torino, Italy
  • 5Dipartimento di Fisica “M. Merlin” dell’Università e del Politecnico di Bari, via Amendola 173, I-70126 Bari, Italy
  • 6University of Geneva, Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire (DPNC), 24 quai Ernest-Ansermet, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland

  • *mazziotta@ba.infn.it

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Vol. 98, Iss. 2 — 15 July 2018

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