SPECIAL JOINT PARTICLE/ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR


NOTE DATE


Date: Tuesday,  30 May 2006   Time: 3:30 p.m.

Place: 1201 Natural Sciences 2

Speaker: Gianfranco Bertone,

Title: Light from Darkness: Dark Matter Annihilations in Mini-spikes around Intermediate Mass Black Holes

Abstract: After a brief review on the status of indirect Dark Matter searches, I will discuss a new strategy based on the detection of gamma-rays and neutrinos from Dark Matter annihilations in 'mini-spikes' around Intermediate Mass Black Holes. I will show that, for typical values of mass and cross section of common DM candidates, mini-spikes would be bright sources of gamma-rays , which could be easily detected with GLAST, and further studied with Air Cherenkov Telescopes CANGAROO, HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS. The detection of many gamma-ray sources not associated with a luminous component of the Local Group, and with identical cut-offs in their energy spectra at the mass of the DM particle, would provide a potential "smoking-gun" signature of DM annihilations and shed new light on the nature of intermediate and supermassive Black Holes. Finally, I will discuss the implications of this scenario for anti-matter and high-energy neutrino searches with upcoming km scale experiments.

Host: J. Feng