Search for dark matter using sub-PeV <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:math>-rays observed by Tibet <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>AS</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math>
Tarak Nath Maity, Akash Kumar Saha, Abhishek Dubey, Ranjan Laha
Abstract
The discovery of diffuse sub-PeV gamma-rays by the Tibet ${\mathrm{AS}}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ Collaboration promises to revolutionize our understanding of the high-energy astrophysical universe. It has been shown that these data broadly agree with prior theoretical expectations. We study the impact of this discovery on a well-motivated new physics scenario: PeV-scale decaying dark matter (DM). Considering a wide range of final states in DM decay, a number of DM density profiles, and numerous astrophysical background models, we find that these data provide the most stringent limit on DM lifetime for various Standard Model final states. In particular, we find that the strongest constraints are derived for DM masses in between a few PeV to a few tens of PeV. Near-future data of these high-energy gamma-rays can be used to discover PeV-scale decaying DM.