PT Journal
AU Folgado, MG
   Gomez-Vargas, GA
   Rius, N
   Ruiz de Austri, R
TI Probing the sterile neutrino portal to Dark Matter with gamma rays
SO Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
JI J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.
PY 2018
BP 002
EP 20pp
VL 08
IS 8
DI 10.1088/1475-7516/2018/08/002
LA English
DE dark matter theory; particle physics – cosmology connection; neutrino theory
AB Sterile neutrinos could provide a link between the Standard Model particles and a dark sector, besides generating active neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism type I. We show that, if dark matter annihilation into sterile neutrinos determines its observed relic abundance, it is possible to explain the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess reported by the Fermi-LAT Collaboration as due to an astrophysical component plus dark matter annihilations. We observe that sterile neutrino portal to dark matter provides an impressively good fit, with a p-value of 0.78 in the best fit point, to the Galactic Center gamma-ray flux, for DM masses in the range (40-80) GeV and sterile neutrino masses 20 GeV less than or similar to M-N < M-DM. Such values are compatible with the limits from Fermi-LAT observations of the dwarfs spheroidal galaxies in the Milky Way halo, which rule out dark matter masses below similar to 50 GeV ( 90 GeV), for sterile neutrino masses M-N less than or similar to MDM ( M-N << M-DM). We also estimate the impact of AMS-02 anti-proton data on this scenario.
ER