How can we disentangle dark matter and cosmic-ray interaction signatures in dwarf galaxies?

Dominik Elsässer


Dwarf galaxies are targets of special interest in the respect that there exist dwarf spheroidal galaxies with extremely high mass to light ratios which make them ideal targets for dark matter searches with gamma-ray and neutrino telescopes. Those searches for dark matter annihilation signatures have already resulted in competitive limits. The difficulty with these types of indirect dark matter searches however is that in case of a signal detection, the line of arguments to prove that this really is a dark matter signal must be exceptionally solid as low-luminosity baryonic signatures could always be an alternative scenario. In this CRC, we perform astronomical observations of both bright and dark dwarf galaxies. At the same time, we model the baryonic and leptonic signatures by including turbulent transport and state-of-the-art interaction cross sections worked out in this CRC. This way, we are able to better describe standard model emission signatures and to transfer this knowledge to the dark systems. Additionally, we can understand start to understand the different development phases of dwarf galaxies. To push the indirect dark matter searches to the precision frontier or even to a detection, we will use the power of wide-field cosmological surveys to systematically complete the local sample of dwarf galaxies and identify the most promising targets for dark matter searches. Using top of the line VHE telescope systems, will then perform the most sensitive ground-based gamma-ray observations to date on these most promising targets.