Confronting Galactic center and dwarf spheroidal gamma-ray observations with cascade annihilation models

Abstract

Many particle dark matter models predict that the dark matter undergoes cascade annihilations, i.e. the annihilation products are 4-body final states. In the context of model-independent cascade annihilation models, we study the compatibility of the dark matter interpretation of the Fermi- LAT Galactic center gamma-ray emission with null detections from dwarf spheroidal galaxies. For canonical values of the Milky Way density profile and the local dark matter density, we find that the dark matter interpretation to the Galactic center emission is strongly constrained. However, uncertainties in the dark matter distribution weaken the constraints and leave open dark matter interpretations over a wide range of mass scales.