Ponente
Descripción
In this talk, we present our studies of the discovery potential of low-mass Galactic dark matter (DM) subhalos for indirect searches of DM. In particular, we analyzed the properties of DM halo substructure in a galaxy like our own. To do so, we have used data from the Via Lactea II (VL-II) N-body cosmological simulation, that resolves subhalos down to one million solar masses. First, we characterized the abundance, distribution and structural properties of the VL-II subhalo population. Then, we repopulated the original simulation with millions of subhalos of masses down to four orders of magnitude the nominal VL-II particle resolution. In a final step, we computed mean subhalo DM annihilation fluxes for the entire subhalo population, for which we created hundreds of VL-II realizations. Our results show that low-mass Galactic subhalos (including those not massive enough to retain stars/gas) may yield annihilation fluxes comparable to those expected from other, more acknowledgeable DM targets like dwarf galaxies. Thus, small subhalos may play a very relevant role in current and future indirect DM searches such as those performed in gamma rays from both the ground and space.
