Analysis Methods for Milky Way Dark Matter Satellite Detection

Abstract

The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) Large Area Telescope (LAT) Dark Matter and New Physics Working group has been developing approaches for the indirect detection of in situ annihilation of dark matter. Our work has assumed that a significant component of dark matter is a new type of Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) in the 100GeV mass range. The annihilation of two WIMPs results in the production of a large number of high energy gamma rays (>1GeV) that can be well measured by the GLAST LAT. The cold dark matter model implies a significant number of as yet unobserved dark matter satellites in our galaxy. The spectra of these galactic satellites are considerably harder than most, if not all, astrophysical sources, have an endpoint at the mass of the WIMP, and are not power laws. We describe a preliminary feasibility study for the indirect detection of dark matter satellites in the Milky Way using the GLAST LAT.