Searching for dark matter in the Galactic halo with a wide field of view TeV gamma-ray observatory in the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

Despite mounting evidence that dark matter (DM) exists in the Universe, its fundamental nature remains unknown. We present sensitivity estimates to detect DM particles with a future very-high-energy (≳ TeV) wide field-of-view gamma-ray observatory in the Southern Hemisphere. This observatory would search for gamma rays from the annihilation or decay of DM particles in the Galactic halo. With a wide field of view, both the Galactic Center and a large fraction of the Galactic halo will be detectable with unprecedented sensitivity to DM in the mass range of ∼500 GeV to ∼2 PeV . These results, combined with those from other present and future gamma-ray observatories, will likely probe the thermal relic annihilation cross section of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles for all masses from ∼80 TeV down to the GeV range in most annihilation channels.