Cerca indirecta de materia fosca WIMP amb els telescopis MAGIC
- Autores: Camilla Maggio
- Directores de la Tesis: Markus Gaug (dir. tes.), Lluís Font Guiteras (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Fabio Iocco (presid.), Oscar Blanch Bigas (secret.), Michele Doro (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Física por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
The nature of Dark Matter (DM) in the Universe is still an enigma at present day, despite the efforts of the scientific community. Among the favorite DM particle candidates beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) is of the most promising. Predicted to have a mass between few GeV and hundreds of TeV, it fits perfectly in the energy range tested by indirect dark matter searches with Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes.
The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, on the Canary Island of La Palma, perform indirect DM searches for WIMPs since their very beginning. Among the targets observed, dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) and the Galactic Center and halo are the most common, both expected to be embedded in a high DM overdensity.
In this thesis I present the outcome of indirect WIMP annihilation searches from three different observation targets (the globular cluster M15 and the dSphs Draco and Coma Berenices) together with the results obtained by a combination of data from the two dSphs studied in this thesis and two dSphs previously analyzed by the MAGIC collaboration. No signal has been observed in any of the four searches.
The study of M15 has been a challenge due to its relatively low DM overdensity predicted and the large systematic uncertainties resulting from the current lack of star velocity dispersion profiles at its core. In order to get an estimate of the sensitivities achievable with this type of analyses, four different realizations of the M15 DM density profile were investigated. Statistical upper limits on the velocity-averaged WIMP annihilation cross-section have been obtained with the use of the DM profiles provided by the H.E.S.S. and VERITAS experiments. The results obtained are compatible with those presented in their respective publications. Further toy statistical upper limits have been obtained taking into account DM density profiles from a convolution of the M15 density profile and its expected non-baryonic matter content in a scenario of DM domination. The limits retrieved with this method are better than the most promising ones from dSphs, but at the same time systematically unreliable, and provide only a minimum value of the velocity-averaged cross-section attainable in M15, awaiting for new kinematic measurements at globular clusters cores.
The dSphs Draco and Coma Berenices were observed during the past years with the MAGIC telescopes within a multi-year diversification campaign. Reliable 95% CL upper limits on the velocity-averaged WIMP annihilation cross-section have been retrieved and are presented in this thesis. The data of these two dSphs are also combined with the ones of the two other dSphs previously observed with the MAGIC telescopes, namely Segue 1 and Ursa Major II, to achieve the best sensitivity for indirect WIMP DM annihilation searches. The results obtained constitute the MAGIC collaboration legacy in this field, and are the most constraining reached by MAGIC and the most stringent in the ~ 10-100 TeV WIMP DM mass interval in gamma-ray astrophysics searches so far, reaching upper limits of the order of 10⁻²⁴ cm³/s for the velocity-averaged cross-section.
In the last part of this thesis, I present my contribution to the development and set up of the Barcelona Raman LIDAR, an advanced and no commercial instrument optimized for the atmospheric monitoring above the future Cherenkov Telescope Array.
