Sensitivity of CTA to gamma-ray emission from the Perseus galaxy cluster

Open Access
Authors
  • J. Pérez-Romero
  • CTA Consortium
  • D. Berge
  • E. Congiu
Publication date 18-03-2022
Journal Proceedings of Science
Event 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021
Article number 546
Volume | Issue number 395
Number of pages 21
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam (ITFA)
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API)
Abstract

In these proceedings we summarize the current status of the study of the sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to detect diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Perseus galaxy cluster. Gamma-ray emission is expected in galaxy clusters both from interactions of cosmic rays (CR) with the intra-cluster medium, or as a product of annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM) particles in case they are weakly interactive massive particles (WIMPs). The observation of Perseus constitutes one of the Key Science Projects to be carried out by the CTA Consortium. In this contribution, we focus on the DM-induced component of the flux. Our DM modelling includes the substructures we expect in the main halo which will boost the annihilation signal significantly. We adopt an ON/OFF observation strategy and simulate the expected gamma-ray signals. Finally we compute the expected CTA sensitivity using a likelihood maximization analysis including the most recent CTA instrument response functions. In absence of signal, we show that CTA will allow us to provide stringent and competitive constraints on TeV DM, especially for the case of DM decay.

Document type Article
Note Proceedings of 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2021)
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.0546
Other links https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85145020373
Downloads
ICRC2021_546 (Final published version)
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