GLAST Dark Matter Search.pdfVIP

Physics in Collision - Stanford, California, June 20-22, 2002 GLAST DARK MATTER SEARCH 2 0 0 Lawrence Wai 2 Stanford Linear Acclerator Center, Stanford, California p ∗ e Representing the GLAST (LAT) Collaboration S 6 1 v 1 2 1 9 ABSTRACT 0 2 The GLAST Large Area Telescope [1], scheduled for launch in 2006, is a next gener- 0 ation space based gamma ray telescope which will improve in point source sensitivity / h by a factor of 30 over that of EGRET [2] below 10 GeV, and extend beyond EGRET p- up to 300 GeV. Thus GLAST offers a unique opportunity to discover WIMP dark o matter through precision studies of gamma rays produced in pair annihilations. The r t most dense region of dark matter in our galaxy is currently thought to occur at the s a center; in particular, dark matter should concentrate within 3 pc of the putative : v supermassive black hole located at the SgrA* radio source [3]. In fact, the 2nd and i X 3rd EGRET catalogs contain a significant point source coincident with the Milky r Way galactic center within a resolution of 12 arcminutes [4]. The EGRET team a has determined that the spectral and temporal characteristics of this point source are consistent with dark matter WIMP annihilations. More detailed analysis [5] has determined that the magnitude and spectrum of the EGRET source is consistent with relic WIMPs concentrated within 3 pc of the central supermassive black hole. Furthermore, the SgrA* radio emission is consistent with the synchrotron