Fermi-LAT and the Gamma-Ray Line Search

Abstract

A distinct signature for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) would be the detection of a monochromatic spectral line in the gamma-ray sky. The Fermi-LAT collaboration has searched for such a line in the energy range from 5 to 300 GeV in five sky regions around the Galactic centre. No globally significant line is detected, and 95% CL upper limits on monochromatic-line strengths are presented. The smallest search region reveals a line-like structure at 133 GeV with a local significance of 2.9 sigma after 4.4 years of data, which translates to less than 1 sigma global significance from a trial factor of around 200.

Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. To appear in the Proceedings of the Patras Workshop, Mainz, Germany, 24-28 June 2013