Isotropic Gamma-ray Background Research Articles

Limits on dark matter annihilation in prompt cusps from the isotropic gamma-ray background

Limits on dark matter annihilation in prompt cusps from the isotropic gamma-ray background

High-energy Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray-faint Accretion-powered Hypernebulae

Hypernebulae are inflated by accretion-powered winds accompanying hyper-Eddington mass transfer from an evolved post-main-sequence star onto a black hole or neutron star companion. The ions accelerated at the termination shock—where the collimated fast disk winds and/or jet collide with the slower, wide-angled wind-fed shell—can generate high-energy neutrinos via hadronic proton–proton reactions, and photohadronic (p γ) interactions with the disk thermal and Comptonized nonthermal background photons. It has been suggested that some fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be powered by such short-lived jetted hyper-accreting engines. Although neutrino emission associated with the millisecond duration bursts themselves is challenging to detect, the persistent radio counterparts of some FRB sources—if associated with hypernebulae—could contribute to the high-energy neutrino diffuse background flux. If the hypernebula birth rate follows that of stellar-merger transients and common envelope events, we find that their volume-integrated neutrino emission—depending on the population-averaged mass-transfer rates—could explain up to ∼25% of the high-energy diffuse neutrino flux observed by the IceCube Observatory and the Baikal Gigaton Volume Detector Telescope. The time-averaged neutrino spectrum from hypernebula—depending on the population parameters—can also reproduce the observed diffuse neutrino spectrum. The neutrino emission could in some cases furthermore extend to >100 PeV, detectable by future ultra-high-energy neutrino observatories. The large optical depth through the nebula to Breit–Wheeler (γ γ) interaction attenuates the escape of GeV–PeV gamma rays coproduced with the neutrinos, rendering these gamma-ray-faint neutrino sources, consistent with the Fermi observations of the isotropic gamma-ray background.

Updated constraints on primordial black hole evaporation

The Hawking evaporation process, leading to the production of detectable particle species, constrains the abundance of light black holes, presumably of primordial origin. Here, we reconsider and correct constraints from soft gamma-ray observations, including of the gamma-ray line, at 511 keV, produced by electron-positron pair-annihilation, where positrons originate from black hole evaporation. First, we point out that the INTEGRAL detection of the Large Magellanic Cloud provides one of the strongest bounds attainable with present observations; and that future MeV gamma-ray telescopes, such as GECCO, will greatly enhance such constraints. Second, we discuss issues with previous limits from the isotropic flux at 511 keV and we provide updated, robust constraints from recent measurements of the diffuse Galactic soft gamma-ray emission and from the isotropic soft gamma-ray background.

Star-forming galaxies provide a larger contribution to the isotropic gamma-ray background than misaligned active galactic nuclei

The total extragalactic γ-ray flux provides a powerful probe into the origin and evolution of the highest energy processes in our universe. An important component of this emission is the isotropic γ-ray background (IGRB), composed of sources that cannot be individually resolved by current experiments. Previous studies have determined that the IGRB can be dominated by either misaligned active galactic nuclei (mAGN) or star-forming galaxies (SFGs). However, these analyses are limited, because they have utilized binary source classifications and examined only one source class at a time. We perform the first combined joint-likelihood analysis that simultaneously correlates the γ-ray luminosity of extragalactic objects with both star-formation and mAGN activity. We find that SFGs produce 48+33 -20% of the total IGRB at 1 GeV and 56+40 -23% of the total IGRB at 10 GeV. The contribution of mAGN is more uncertain, but can also be significant. Future work to quantify the radio and infrared properties of nearby galaxies could significantly improve these constraints.

Neutrino predictions from choked Gamma-Ray Bursts and comparison with the observed cosmic diffuse neutrino flux

The strong constraints from the Fermi-LAT data on the isotropic gamma-ray background suggest that the neutrinos observed by IceCube might possibly come from sources that are hidden to gamma-ray observations. A possibility emerged in recent years is that neutrinos may come from jets of collapsing massive stars which fail to break out of the stellar envelope, and for this reason they are known as choked jets, or choked Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). We here show our predictions of neutrino flux and spectrum expected from these sources, focusing on Type II SNe, through detailed calculations of pγ interactions and accounting for all the neutrino production channels and scattering angles. We provide predictions of expected event rates for ANTARES, IceCube, and the next generation neutrino telescope KM3NeT.We also compute the contribution of the choked GRB population to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux, thus providing constraints on the local rate of this source population as to reproduce the observed neutrino flux.

Revisiting constraints on WIMPs around primordial black holes

While primordial black holes (PBHs) with masses ${M}_{\mathrm{PBH}}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}11}\text{ }\text{ }{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ cannot comprise the entirety of dark matter, the existence of even a small population of these objects can have profound astrophysical consequences. A subdominant population of PBHs will efficiently accrete dark matter particles before matter-radiation equality, giving rise to high-density dark matter spikes. We consider here the scenario in which dark matter is comprised primarily of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with a small subdominant contribution coming from PBHs, and revisit the constraints on the annihilation of WIMPs in these spikes using observations of the isotropic gamma-ray background (IGRB) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB), for a range of WIMP masses, annihilation channels, cross sections, and PBH mass functions. We find that the constraints derived using the IGRB have been significantly overestimated (in some cases by many orders of magnitude), and that limits obtained using observations of the CMB are typically stronger than, or comparable to, those coming from the IGRB. Importantly, we show that $\ensuremath{\sim}\mathcal{O}({M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}})$ PBHs can still contribute significantly to the dark matter density for sufficiently low WIMP masses and p-wave annihilation cross sections.

High energy particles from young supernovae: gamma-ray and neutrino connections

Young core-collapse supernovae (YSNe)are factories of high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays as the shock accelerated protons efficiently interact with the protons in thedense circumstellar medium. We explore the detection prospects of secondary particles from YSNe of TypeIIn, II-P, IIb/II-L, and Ib/c.Type IIn YSNe are found to produce the largest flux of neutrinos and gamma-rays, followed by II-P YSNe. Fermi-LAT and the Cherenkov Telescope Array (IceCube-Gen2) have the potential to detect Type IIn YSNe up to 10 Mpc (4 Mpc), with the remaining YSNe Types being detectable closer to Earth. We also find that YSNe may dominate the diffuse neutrino background, especially between 10 TeV and 103 TeV, while they do not constitute a dominant component to the isotropic gamma-ray background observed by Fermi-LAT. At the same time, the IceCube high-energy starting events and Fermi-LAT data already allow us to exclude a large fraction of the model parameter space of YSNe otherwise inferred from multi-wavelength electromagnetic observations of these transients.

Contribution from TeV halos to the isotropic gamma-ray background

Recent observations have shown that pulsars are surrounded by extended regions which emit TeV-scale gamma rays through the inverse Compton scattering of very high energy electrons and positrons. Such TeV halos are responsible for a large fraction of the Milky Way's TeV-scale gamma-ray emission. In this paper, we calculate the gamma-ray spectrum from the population of TeV halos located within the Andromeda Galaxy, predicting a signal that is expected to be detectable by the Cherenkov Telescope Array. We also calculate the contribution from TeV halos to the isotropic gamma-ray background, finding that these sources should contribute significantly to this flux at the highest measured energies, constituting up to $\ensuremath{\sim}20%$ of the signal observed above $\ensuremath{\sim}0.1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$. We also comment on the implications of our results for the origin of the diffuse neutrino flux detected by IceCube.

Superradiant pion clouds around primordial black holes

We show that highly spinning primordial black holes of mass M ∼ 1012 kg, potentially born in a matter-dominated era after inflation, can produce clouds of pions in their vicinity via the superradiant instability, with densities up to that of nuclear matter. We discuss the electromagnetic signatures of this process, via neutral pion decay and charged pion annihilation into photons, computing in particular their contribution to the isotropic gamma-ray background. This allows us to place upper bounds on the abundance of such primordial black holes that are comparable to the ones obtained from Hawking evaporation. We also discuss the possibility of directly observing such clouds in high-redshift superclusters.

Estimating the neutrino flux from choked gamma-ray bursts

The strong constraints from the Fermi-LAT data on the isotropic gamma-ray background suggest that the neutrinos observed by IceCube might possibly come from sources that are hidden to gamma-ray observations. A possibility recently discussed in the literature is that neutrinos may come from jets of collapsing massive stars which fail to break out of the stellar envelope, and for this reason they are known as choked jets, or choked Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). In this paper, we estimate the neutrino flux and spectrum expected from these sources, focusing on Type II SNe. We perform detailed calculations of pγ interactions, accounting for all the neutrino production channels and scattering angles. We provide predictions of expected event rates for operating neutrino telescopes, such as ANTARES and IceCube, as well as for the future generation telescope KM3NeT. We find that for GRB energies channeled into protons spanning between ∼ 1051–1053 erg, choked GRBs may substantially contribute to the observed astrophysical neutrino flux, if their local rate is ∼ 80–1 Gpc-3yr-1 respectively.

Characteristics of the Diffuse Astrophysical Electron and Tau Neutrino Flux with Six Years of IceCube High Energy Cascade Data.

We report on the first measurement of the astrophysical neutrino flux using particle showers (cascades) in IceCube data from 2010-2015. Assuming standard oscillations, the astrophysical neutrinos in this dedicated cascade sample are dominated (∼90%) by electron and tau flavors. The flux, observed in the sensitive energy range from 16TeV to 2.6PeV, is consistent with a single power-law model as expected from Fermi-type acceleration of high energy particles at astrophysical sources. We find the flux spectral index to be γ=2.53±0.07 and a flux normalization for each neutrino flavor of ϕ_{astro}=1.66_{-0.27}^{+0.25} at E_{0}=100 TeV, in agreement with IceCube's complementary muon neutrino results and with all-neutrino flavor fit results. In the measured energy range we reject spectral indices γ≤2.28 at ≥3σ significance level. Because of high neutrino energy resolution and low atmospheric neutrino backgrounds, this analysis provides the most detailed characterization of the neutrino flux at energies below ∼100 TeV compared to previous IceCube results. Results from fits assuming more complex neutrino flux models suggest a flux softening at high energies and a flux hardening at low energies (p value ≥0.06). The sizable and smooth flux measured below ∼100 TeV remains a puzzle. In order to not violate the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background as measured by the Fermi Large Area Telescope, it suggests the existence of astrophysical neutrino sources characterized by dense environments which are opaque to gamma rays.

Breaking a dark degeneracy: The gamma-ray signature of early matter domination

The Universe's early thermal history is poorly constrained, and it is possible that it underwent a period of early matter domination driven by a heavy particle or an oscillating scalar field that decayed into radiation before the onset of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The entropy sourced by this particle's decay reduces the cross section required for thermal-relic dark matter to achieve the observed abundance. This degeneracy between dark matter properties and the thermal history vastly widens the field of viable dark matter candidates, undermining efforts to constrain dark matter's identity. Fortunately, an early matter-dominated era also amplifies density fluctuations at small scales and leads to early microhalo formation, boosting the dark matter annihilation rate and bringing smaller cross sections into the view of existing indirect-detection probes. Employing several recently developed models of microhalo formation and evolution, we develop a procedure to derive indirect-detection constraints on dark matter annihilation in cosmologies with early matter domination. This procedure properly accounts for the unique morphology of microhalo-dominated signals. While constraints depend on dark matter's free-streaming scale, the microhalos make it possible to obtain upper bounds as small as $\langle\sigma v\rangle \lesssim 10^{-32}$ cm$^3$s$^{-1}$ using Fermi-LAT observations of the isotropic gamma-ray background and the Draco dwarf galaxy.

Gamma-ray luminosity function of BL Lac objects and contribution to the extragalactic gamma-ray background

ABSTRACT Using a significantly enlarged Fermi-LAT BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) sample, we construct the gamma-ray luminosity function (GLF) of BL Lacs, by the joint use of the space density distribution and source counts distribution. We use three well-studied forms of the GLF, i.e. the forms of pure density evolution (PDE), pure luminosity evolution (PLE), and luminosity-dependent density evolution (LDDE). The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique is used to constrain model parameters. Our results suggest that LDDE model can give the best description for the BL Lac GLF. And the model shows that the BL Lacs with a harder GeV spectrum and a less luminosity evolve as strongly as flat spectrum radio quasars, and the evolution decreases as increasing luminosity. We also model the average photon spectra of BL Lacs with a double power-laws model. Using this modelled spectra, BL Lacs contribute $\sim \!20{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the total extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) at E > 100 MeV, $\sim \!100{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the EGB at E > 50 GeV, and the unresolved BL Lacs contribute $\sim\! 20 {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray background at E > 100 MeV. A prediction of the TeV EGB spectra are given, which may be tested by the future detectors.

The DAMPE excess and gamma-ray constraints

The direct measurements of the cosmic electron-positron spectrum around 1 TeV made by DAMPE have induced many theoretical speculations about possible excesses in the data above the standard astrophysical predictions that might have the dark matter (DM) origin. These attempts mainly fall into two categories: i) DM annihilation (or decay) in the Galactic halo producing the broad spectrum excess; ii) DM annihilation in the nearby compact subhalo producing the sharp peak at 1.4 TeV. We investigate the gamma-ray emission accompanying $e^+e^-$ production in DM annihilation, as well as various theoretical means to suppress the prompt radiation, such as specific interaction vertices or multi-cascade modes, and conclude that these attempts are in tension with various gamma-ray observations. We show that the DM explanations of the broad spectrum excess tend to contradict the diffuse isotropic gamma-ray background (IGRB), measured by Fermi-LAT, while the nearby subhalo scenario is constrained by nonobservation in the surveys, performed by Fermi-LAT, MAGIC and HESS. We also briefly review other types of gamma-ray constraints, which seem to rule out the DM interpretations of the DAMPE broad spectrum excess as well.

Dark matter decaying into millicharged particles as a solution to AMS-02 positron excess

The positron excess observed by PAMELA and then confirmed by AMS-02 has intrigued the particle physics community since 2008. Various dark matter decay and annihilation models have been built to explain the excess. However, the bounds from isotropic gamma ray disfavor the canonical dark matter decay scenario. We propose a solution to this excess based on the decay of dark matter particles into intermediate millicharged particles which can be trapped by the galactic magnetic field. The subsequent decay of the millicharged particles to electron positron in our vicinity can explain the excess. Since these particles diffuse out of the halo before decay, their contribution to the isotropic gamma ray background is expected to be much smaller than that in the canonic dark matter decay scenarios. We show that the model is testable by direct dark matter search experiments.

Constraints on decaying dark matter from the isotropic gamma-ray background

If the dark matter is unstable, the decay of these particles throughout the universe and in the halo of the Milky Way could contribute significantly to the isotropic gamma-ray background (IGRB) as measured by Fermi. In this article, we calculate the high-latitude gamma-ray flux resulting from dark matter decay for a wide range of channels and masses, including all contributions from inverse Compton scattering and accounting for the production and full evolution of cosmological electromagnetic cascades. We also make use of recent multi-wavelength analyses that constrain the astrophysical contributions to the IGRB, enabling us to more strongly restrict the presence any component arising from decaying dark matter. Over a wide range of decay channels and masses (from GeV to EeV and above), we derive stringent lower limits on the dark matter's lifetime, generally in the range of τ ∼ (1–5)× 1028 s.}

Gamma-Ray Production in the Extended Halo of the Galaxy and Possible Implications for the Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays

Various studies have implied the existence of a gaseous halo around the Galaxy extending out to 100 kpc. Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) that propagate to the halo, either by diffusion or by convection with the possibly existing large-scale Galactic wind, can interact with the gas therein and produce gamma-rays via proton-proton collision. We calculate the cosmic ray distribution in the halo and the gamma-ray flux, and explore the dependence of the result on model parameters such as diffusion coefficient, CR luminosity, CR spectral index. We find that the current measurement of isotropic gamma-ray background at $\lesssim$TeV with Fermi Large Area Telescope already approaches a level that can provide interesting constraints on the properties of Galactic cosmic ray (e.g., with CR luminosity $L_{CR}\leq 10^{41}$erg/s). We also discuss the possibilities of the Fermi bubble and IceCube neutrinos originating from the proton-proton collision between cosmic rays and gas in the halo, as well as the implication of our results for the baryon budget of the hot circumgalactic medium of our Galaxy. Given that the isotropic gamma-ray background is likely to be dominated by unresolved extragalactic sources, future telescopes may extract more individual sources from the IGRB, and hence put even more stringent restriction on the relevant quantities (such as Galactic cosmic ray luminosity and baryon budget in the halo) in the presence of a turbulent halo that we consider.

Searching for dark matter annihilation from individual halos: uncertainties, scatter and signal-to-noise ratios

Individual extragalactic dark matter halos, such as those associated with nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters, are promising targets for searches for gamma rays from dark matter annihilation. We review the predictions for the annihilation flux from individual halos, focusing on the effect of current uncertainties in the concentration-mass relation and the contribution from halo substructure, and also estimating the intrinsic halo-to-halo scatter expected. After careful consideration of recent simulation results, we conclude that the concentrations of the smallest halos, while well-determined at high redshift, are still uncertain by a factor of 4–6 when extrapolated to low redshift. This in turn produces up to two orders of magnitude uncertainty in the predicted annihilation flux for any halo mass above this scale. Substructure evolution, the small-scale cutoff to the power spectrum, cosmology, and baryonic effects all introduce smaller, though cumulative, uncertainties. We then consider intrinsic variations from halo to halo. These arise from variations in concentration and substructure, leading to a scatter of ∼2.5 in the predicted annihilation luminosity. Finally, we consider the problem of detecting gamma rays from annihilation, given the expected contributions from other sources. We estimate the signal-to-noise ratio for gamma-ray detection as a function of halo mass, assuming that the isotropic gamma-ray background and cosmic rays from star formation are the main noise sources in the detection. This calculation suggests that group-scale halos, individually or in stacks, may be a particularly interesting target for the next generation of annihilation searches.

Modeling evolution of dark matter substructure and annihilation boost

We study evolution of dark matter substructures, especially how they lose the mass and change density profile after they fall in gravitational potential of larger host halos. We develop an analytical prescription that models the subhalo mass evolution and calibrate it to results of N-body numerical simulations of various scales from very small (Earth size) to large (galaxies to clusters) halos. We then combine the results with halo accretion histories, and calculate the subhalo mass function that is physically motivated down to Earth-mass scales. Our results --- valid for arbitrary host masses and redshifts --- show reasonable agreement with those of numerical simulations at resolved scales. Our analytical model also enables self-consistent calculations of the boost factor of dark matter annhilation, which we find to increase from tens of percent at the smallest (Earth) and intermediate (dwarfs) masses to a factor of several at galaxy size, and to become as large as a factor of $\sim$10 for the largest halos (clusters) at small redshifts. Our analytical approach can accommodate substructures in the subhalos (sub-subhalos) in a consistent framework, which we find to give up to a factor of a few enhancement to the annihilation boost. Presence of the subhalos enhances the intensity of the isotropic gamma-ray background by a factor of a few, and as the result, the measurement by Fermi Large Area Telescope excludes the annihilation cross section greater than $\sim$$4\times 10^{-26}$ cm$^3$ s$^{-1}$ for dark matter masses up to $\sim$200 GeV.

Can Winds Driven by Active Galactic Nuclei Account for the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Backgrounds?

Abstract Various observations are revealing the widespread occurrence of fast and powerful winds in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that are distinct from relativistic jets, likely launched from accretion disks and interacting strongly with the gas of their host galaxies. During the interaction, strong shocks are expected to form that can accelerate nonthermal particles to high energies. Such winds have been suggested to be responsible for a large fraction of the observed extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) and the diffuse neutrino background, via the decay of neutral and charged pions generated in inelastic pp collisions between protons accelerated by the forward shock and the ambient gas. However, previous studies did not properly account for processes such as adiabatic losses that may reduce the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes significantly. We evaluate the production of gamma rays and neutrinos by AGN-driven winds in detail by modeling their hydrodynamic and thermal evolution, including the effects of their two-temperature structure. We find that they can only account for less than ∼30% of the EGB flux, as otherwise the model would violate the independent upper limit derived from the diffuse isotropic gamma-ray background. If the neutrino spectral index is steep with Γ ≳ 2.2, a severe tension with the isotropic gamma-ray background would arise as long as the winds contribute more than 20% of the IceCube neutrino flux in the 10–100 TeV range. At energies ≳ 100 TeV, we find that the IceCube neutrino flux may still be accountable by AGN-driven winds if the spectral index is as small as Γ ∼ 2.0–2.1.