New constraints on sterile neutrino dark matter from NuSTAR M31 observations
Name
PhysRevD.99.083005.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
929.17 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Ng, Kenny CY
Roach, Brandon M
Perez, Kerstin
Beacom, John F
Horiuchi, Shunsaku
Krivonos, Roman
Wik, Daniel R
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019 American Physical Society. We use a combined 1.2 Ms of NuSTAR observations of M31 to search for x-ray lines from sterile neutrino dark matter decay. For the first time in a NuSTAR analysis, we consistently take into account the signal contribution from both the focused and unfocused fields of view. We also reduce the modeling systematic uncertainty by performing spectral fits to each observation individually and statistically combining the results, instead of stacking the spectra. We find no evidence of unknown lines, and thus derive limits on the sterile neutrino parameters. Our results place stringent constraints for dark matter masses 12 keV, which reduces the available parameter space for sterile neutrino dark matter produced via neutrino mixing (e.g., in the νMSM) by approximately one-third. Additional NuSTAR observations, together with improved low-energy background modeling, could probe the remaining parameter space in the future. Lastly, we also report model-independent limits on generic dark matter decay rates and annihilation cross sections.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.99.083005
