Search for Signatures of Dark Matter Annihilation in the Galactic Center with HAWC

Abstract

We conduct an indirect dark matter (DM) search in the Galactic Center, focusing on a square region within $\pm 9^{\circ }$ in Galactic longitude and latutide, using 2,865 days of data ($\sim$8 years) from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. We explore DM particles within the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles framework with masses from 1 TeV to 10 PeV. Analyzing three annihilation channels ($b\bar{b}$, ${\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$, $W^{+}{W}^{-}$) and three density profiles (Navarro-Frenk-White, Einasto, Burkert), we find no significant excess and set 95\% confidence-level upper limits on the velocity-weighted annihilation cross section. Our results provide the first constraints on DM particles well above 100 TeV using gamma-ray data from the Galactic Center, with the strongest limits $\mathcal{O}(10^{-24})$~cm${}^3$/s, from the ${\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ channel and the Einasto profile.