Comptonization of cosmic microwave background photons in dwarf spheroidal galaxies

Abstract

We present theoretical modelling of the electron distribution produced by annihilating neutralino dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). In particular, we follow up the idea of Colafrancesco and find that such electrons distort the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. For an assumed neutralino mass of 10 GeV and beam size of 1 arcsec, the SZ temperature decrement is of the order of nano-Kelvin for dSph models with a soft core. By contrast, it is of the order of micro-Kelvin for the strongly cusped dSph models favoured by some cosmological simulations. Although this is out of reach of current instruments, it may well be detectable by future mm telescopes, such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array. We also show that the upscattered CMB photons have energies within reach of upcoming X-ray observatories, but that the flux of such photons is too small to be detectable now. None the less, we conclude that searching for the dark matter induced SZ effect is a promising way of constraining the dark distribution in dSphs, especially if the particles are light.