Perspective of monochromatic gamma-ray line detection with the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) facility onboard China’s space station

Abstract

HERD is the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection instrument proposed to operate onboard China’s space station in the 2020s. It is designed to detect energetic cosmic ray nuclei, leptons and photons with a high energy resolution ( ∼1% for electrons and photons and 20% for nuclei) and a large geometry factor (>3 m2 sr for electrons and diffuse photons and > [2]m2 sr for nuclei). In this work we discuss the capability of HERD to detect monochromatic γ-ray lines, based on simulations of the detector performance. It is shown that HERD will be one of the most sensitive instruments for monochromatic γ-ray searches at energies between ∼ 10 to a few hundred GeV. Above hundreds of GeV, Cherenkov telescopes will be more sensitive due to their large effective area. As a specific example, we show that a good portion of the parameter space of a supersymmetric dark matter model can be probed with HERD.