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[1010.2752] Dark Matter Annihilation in The Galactic Center

Posted: October 22 2010
by Mark Wyman
So, is this it? 8 GeV dark matter that annihilates into tau leptons?

[1010.2752] Dark Matter Annihilation in The Galactic Center

Posted: October 22 2010
by Douglas Applegate
Possibly not. Though I'm not a Fermi scientist, I work near some. One comment I overheard was that a bubble from multiple supernovae could be a viable alternative.

Also, treating the Fermi point spread function as a Gaussian is apparently a big mistake -- the region of interest in this paper is at the limit of Fermi's resolution, from what I understand. (One scientist, to remain unnamed for dignity reasons, suffered a fit of giggles upon hearing about the Gaussian approximation in this paper.) Finally, I got the impression that the Galprop people were somewhat uncomfortable with how their models were used.

Hopefully, the authors and the Fermi folks will have a sit-down soon and hash out any oversimplifications. Nothing like a little competition to bring out the best science!