Extragalactic diffuse γ-rays from dark matter annihilation: revised prediction and full modelling uncertainties

Abstract

Recent high-energy data from Fermi-LAT on the diffuse γ-ray background have been used to set among the best constraints on annihilating TeV cold dark matter candidates. In order to assess the robustness of these limits, we revisit and update the calculation of the isotropic extragalactic γ-ray intensity from dark matter annihilation. The emission from halos with masses ⩾ 1010 M⊙ provides a robust lower bound on the predicted intensity. The intensity including smaller halos whose properties are extrapolated from their higher mass counterparts is typically 5 times higher, and boost from subhalos yields an additional factor ∼ 1.5. We also rank the uncertainties from all ingredients and provide a detailed error budget for them. Overall, our fiducial intensity is a factor 5 lower than the one derived by the Fermi-LAT collaboration in their latest analysis. This indicates that the limits set on extragalactic dark matter annihilations could be relaxed by the same factor. We also calculate the expected intensity for self-interacting dark matter in massive halos and find the emission reduced by a factor 3 compared to the collisionless counterpart. The next release of the CLUMPY code will provide all the tools necessary to reproduce and ease future improvements of this prediction.