Universal profiles for radio searches of dark matter in dwarf galaxies

Abstract

The phenomenology of diffuse radio emission from Dark Matter annihilation or decay in dwarf spheroidal galaxies is examined. We introduce (in the context of cosmic-ray physics) a novel strategy for the computation of the relevant synchrotron signals. In particular, we identify various regimes where, in analogy to prompt gamma rays, the diffuse radio signal from dark matter annihilation/decay can be expressed as the multiplication of a "halo" times a spectral function. These functions are computed here for the first time for a number of benchmark cases. Furthermore, we find parameter regions in which the emissivity can be well approximated by a universal function ~ sin(kr)/r, where r is the galacto-centric distance. Our theoretical setup differs from previous work in that, instead of employing a method-of-images strategy, we consider a Fourier-mode expansion of the relevant Green's functions. With this strategy, exact results can be obtained with very low computational cost and for generic dark matter models. In particular, O(10- 100) Fourier modes can be easily incorporated into the computations in order to probe the smallest scales of the problem. We also propose a new strategy to search for dark matter using radio observations of dwarf galaxies that is (1) easy to implement and (2) free of the otherwise large degeneracies in the description of synchrotron signals from dark matter. Finally, we correct a mistake in a widely used Green's function formula in this context. We show that the original expression leads to systematically incorrect - and in some cases divergent - results in the regime where the characteristic time-scale for diffusion is smaller than that for energy losses.