Dark matter and its origin are one of the biggest riddles of the modern physics. It is thought that dark matter is responsible for 80% of the total mass of the Universe. Although little is known about the particles dark matter consists of, it is speculated that there are two principal classes of dark matter particle candidates.

The first class is considered to be annihilating dark matter candidates, called weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs, which are supposed to interact with ordinary matter via electroweak and gravitational interaction. The second class consists of dark matter candidates, which can decay into Standard Model (SM) particles. For example, a bosonic candidate may decay into two photons, which produce a signature of this process in a form of a narrow spectral line, which then can be measured and interpreted. Many studies have already been carried out in the search of the dark matter decay and now even more are coming up.

A team of scientists from University of Geneva, Switzerland, Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands, Ecole Polytechique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Bogolyubov Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ukraine, National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, Ukraine and CERN Physics Department, Switzerland presented their research on the potential of an upcoming Large Observatory For x-ray Timing (LOFT) telescope to detect dark matter.

The study is available at arXiv.org.

LOFT will yield an essential sensitivity improvement for the detection of decaying dark matter in the X-ray region, according to the researchers. LOFT mission is being executed by the European Space Agency as one of the candidates for “Cosmic Vision” program that will launch after 2020.

As reported in the paper, a potential for dark matter decay detection with different instruments may be seen by comparing their energy resolution and the so called “grasp”, the product of the effective area and the field of view of the detector. The team evaluated the mentioned properties of various X-ray telescopes and concluded that LOFT’s Large Area Detector (LAD) will be superior to other dark matter detectors in terms of sensitivity for the spectral line detection.

According to the study, LOFT’s excellent sensitivity characteristics may help to detect non-interacting sterile neutrinos and prove the Neutrino Minimal Standard Model, which serves as an expansion of the SM and takes into account some problems beyond the Standard Model, including neutrino oscillations, baryon asymmetry of the Universe and the existence of dark matter. Thus, LOFT telescope could prove to be of extreme importance to the theoretical models of modern physics.

Source: www.technology.org