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1. Indirect search for dark matter with a combined analysis of dwarf spheroidal galaxies from VERITAS

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.063034  

   Acharyya, A; Adams, C B; Bangale, P; Bartkoske, J T; Batista, P; Benbow, W; Christiansen, J L; Chromey, A J; Duerr, A; Errando, M; et al (September 2024, Physical Review D)

   Understanding the nature and identity of dark matter is a key goal in the physics community. In the case that TeV-scale dark matter particles decay or annihilate into standard model particles, very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays (greater than 100 GeV) will be present in the final state. The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array that can indirectly detect VHE gamma rays in an energy range of 100 GeV to > 30 TeV. Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are ideal candidates in the search for dark matter due to their high dark matter content, high mass-to-light ratios, and their low gamma-ray fluxes from astrophysical processes. This study uses a legacy data set of 638 hours collected on 17 dSphs, built over 11 years with an observing strategy optimized according to the dark matter content of the targets. The study addresses a broad dark matter particle mass range, extending from 200 GeV to 30 PeV. In the absence of a detection, we set the upper limits on the dark matter velocity-weighted annihilation cross section 

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2. Current and Future γ-Ray Searches for Dark Matter Annihilation Beyond the Unitarity Limit

   https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac9387  

   Tak, Donggeun; Baumgart, Matthew; Rodd, Nicholas L.; Pueschel, Elisa (October 2022, The Astrophysical Journal Letters)

   Abstract For decades, searches for electroweak-scale dark matter (DM) have been performed without a definitive detection. This lack of success may hint that DM searches have focused on the wrong mass range. A proposed candidate beyond the canonical parameter space is ultraheavy DM (UHDM). In this work, we consider indirect UHDM annihilation searches for masses between 30 TeV and 30 PeV—extending well beyond the unitarity limit at ∼100 TeV—and discuss the basic requirements for DM models in this regime. We explore the feasibility of detecting the annihilation signature, and the expected reach for UHDM with current and future very-high-energy (VHE; >100 GeV) γ -ray observatories. Specifically, we focus on three reference instruments: two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope arrays, modeled on VERITAS and CTA-North, and one extended air shower array, motivated by HAWC. With reasonable assumptions on the instrument response functions and background rate, we find a set of UHDM parameters (mass and cross section) for which a γ -ray signature can be detected by the aforementioned observatories. We further compute the expected upper limits for each experiment. With realistic exposure times, the three instruments can probe DM across a wide mass range. At the lower end, it can still have a point-like cross section, while at higher masses the DM could have a geometric cross section, indicative of compositeness. 

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3. Searching for TeV Dark Matter in Irregular Dwarf Galaxies with HAWC Observatory

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acb5f1  

   Alfaro, R.; Alvarez, C.; Arteaga-Velázquez, J. C.; Rojas, D. Avila; Solares, H. A.; Babu, R.; Belmont-Moreno, E.; Caballero-Mora, K. S.; Capistrán, T.; Carramiñana, A.; et al (March 2023, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract We present the results of dark matter (DM) searches in a sample of 31 dwarf irregular (dIrr) galaxies within the field of view of the HAWC Observatory. dIrr galaxies are DM-dominated objects in which astrophysical gamma-ray emission is estimated to be negligible with respect to the secondary gamma-ray flux expected by annihilation or decay of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). While we do not see any statistically significant DM signal in dIrr galaxies, we present the exclusion limits (95% C.L.) for annihilation cross section and decay lifetime for WIMP candidates with masses between 1 and 100 TeV. Exclusion limits from dIrr galaxies are relevant and complementary to benchmark dwarf Spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. In fact, dIrr galaxies are targets kinematically different from benchmark dSph, preserving the footprints of different evolution histories. We compare the limits from dIrr galaxies to those from ultrafaint and classical dSph galaxies previously observed with HAWC. We find that the constraints are comparable to the limits from classical dSph galaxies and ∼2 orders of magnitude weaker than the ultrafaint dSph limits. 

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4. Search for dark matter from the center of the Earth with 10 years of IceCube data

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14144-7  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (May 2025, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract The nature of dark matter remains unresolved in fundamental physics. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which could explain the nature of dark matter, can be captured by celestial bodies like the Sun or Earth, leading to enhanced self-annihilation into Standard Model particles including neutrinos detectable by neutrino telescopes such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This article presents a search for muon neutrinos from the center of the Earth performed with 10 years of IceCube data using a track-like event selection. We considered a number of WIMP annihilation channels ($$\chi \chi \rightarrow \tau ^+\tau ^-$$ $\chi \chi \to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$/$$W^+W^-$$ $W^{+}{W}^{-}$/$$b\bar{b}$$ $b\overline{b}$) and masses ranging from 10 GeV to 10 TeV. No significant excess over background due to a dark matter signal was found while the most significant result corresponds to the annihilation channel$$\chi \chi \rightarrow b\bar{b}$$ $\chi \chi \to b\overline{b}$for the mass$$m_{\chi }=250$$ $m_{\chi }=250$ GeV with a post-trial significance of$$1.06\sigma $$ $1.06\sigma$. Our results are competitive with previous such searches and direct detection experiments. Our upper limits on the spin-independent WIMP scattering are world-leading among neutrino telescopes for WIMP masses$$m_{\chi }>100$$ $m_{\chi }>100$ GeV. 

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5. Stability and pulsation of the first dark stars

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab420  

   Rindler-Daller, Tanja; Freese, Katherine; Townsend, Richard H; Visinelli, Luca (April 2021, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   null (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT The first bright objects to form in the Universe might not have been ‘ordinary’ fusion-powered stars, but ‘dark stars’ (DSs) powered by the annihilation of dark matter (DM) in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). If discovered, DSs can provide a unique laboratory to test DM models. DSs are born with a mass of the order of M⊙ and may grow to a few million solar masses; in this work we investigate the properties of early DSs with masses up to $$\sim \! 1000 \, \mathrm{ M}_\odot$$, fueled by WIMPS weighing 100 GeV. We improve the previous implementation of the DM energy source into the stellar evolution code mesa. We show that the growth of DSs is not limited by astrophysical effects: DSs up to $$\sim \!1000 \, \mathrm{ M}_{\odot }$$ exhibit no dynamical instabilities; DSs are not subject to mass-loss driven by super-Eddington winds. We test the assumption of previous work that the injected energy per WIMP annihilation is constant throughout the star; relaxing this assumption does not change the properties of the DSs. Furthermore, we study DS pulsations, for the first time investigating non-adiabatic pulsation modes, using the linear pulsation code gyre. We find that acoustic modes in DSs of masses smaller than $$\sim \! 200 \, \mathrm{ M}_\odot$$ are excited by the κ − γ and γ mechanism in layers where hydrogen or helium is (partially) ionized. Moreover, we show that the mass-loss rates potentially induced by pulsations are negligible compared to the accretion rates. 

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