An optimized search for dark matter in the galactic halo with HAWC

Abstract

The Galactic Halo is a key target for indirect dark matter detection. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a high-energy (∼300 GeV to >100 TeV) gamma-ray detector located in central Mexico. HAWC operates via the water Cherenkov technique and has both a wide field of view of ∼ 2 sr and a >95% duty cycle, making it ideal for analyses of highly extended sources. We made use of these properties of HAWC and a new background-estimation technique optimized for extended sources to probe a large region of the Galactic Halo for dark matter signals. With this approach, we set improved constraints on dark matter annihilation and decay between masses of 10 and 100 TeV. Due to the large spatial extent of the HAWC field of view, these constraints are robust against uncertainties in the Galactic dark matter spatial profile.