Physics & Astronomy Esra Bulbul - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"Astrophysical Searches of Dark Matter Decay and Annihilation"

The abundance of ubiquitous dark matter is now well quantified by observations, yet its nature remains unknown. Dark matter is believed to be composed primarily of an elementary particle. Searches for the dark matter particle are one of the major efforts in particle physics and astrophysics today. X-ray observations of dark matter dominated objects have the potential to reveal a signal from decaying or self interacting dark matter. A well motivated dark matter candidate sterile neutrino oscillates into an active neutrino by emitting an X-ray photon. Another viable candidate is a self interacting dark matter, which could also produce an X-ray signal. I will summarize constraints on decaying and self interacting dark matter models with a focus on the detection of an unidentified emission line 3.55 keV in observations of clusters of galaxies.