Abstract
We provide an updated and improved study of the prospects of the H.E.S.S. and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) experiments in testing neutralino dark matter in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with nine free parameters (p9MSSM). We include all relevant experimental constraints and theoretical developments, in particular a calculation of the Sommerfeld enhancement for both present-day annihilations and the relic abundance. We perform a state-of-the-art analysis of the CTA sensitivity with a log- likelihood test ratio statistics and apply it to a numerical scan of the p9MSSM parameter space focusing on a TeV scale dark matter. We find that, assuming Einasto profile of dark matter halo in the Milky Way, H.E.S.S. has already been able to nearly reach the so-called thermal WIMP value, while CTA will go below it by providing a further improvement of at least an order of magnitude. Both H.E.S.S. and CTA are sensitive to several cases for which direct detection cross section will be below the so-called neutrino floor, with H.E.S.S. being sensitive to most of the wino region, while CTA also covering a large fraction of the ∼1 TeV higgsino region. We show that CTA sensitivity will be further improved in the monochromatic photon search mode for both single-component and underabundant dark matter.
Highlights
We provide an updated and improved study of the prospects of the H.E.S.S. and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) experiments in testing neutralino dark matter in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with nine free parameters (p9MSSM)
In order to verify whether a particular point in the p9MSSM parameter space is within current bounds and future sensitivities, we combine limits obtained for pure annihilation final states by taking their average weighted by the branching-ratios corresponding to those channels
In cyan we show a mixture of these two gaugino states, with the additional constraint that the higgsino composition remain below 10%, |Z13|2 + |Z14|2 < 0.1
Summary
We provide an updated and improved study of the prospects of the H.E.S.S. and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) experiments in testing neutralino dark matter in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with nine free parameters (p9MSSM). While a continuous part of the gamma-ray flux is expected to drop for energies close to the DM mass, pronounced line-like features that appear there provide a distinctive signature of TeV DM over astrophysical backgrounds. The quest for such spectral features further motivates the searches carried out with instruments with large effective area at TeV energies, such as ground-based arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). Our analysis improves previous works by: (i) deriving the projected CTA sensitivity via a state-of-the-art binned likelihood analysis to be used by the CTA Collaboration, (ii) using up-to-date experimental constraints and numerical tools that include, e.g., 13 TeV LHC data and (iii) taking into account the Sommerfeld enhancement (SE) for all points in the scan, whereas previous works included it only as an estimate or only in some selected sectors of parameter space
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