Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Indirect searches for dark matter with the VERITAS very high energy gamma-ray observatory

Matthieu Vivier

Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Delaware

In the cosmological paradigm, cold dark matter dominates the mass content of the Universe and is present at every scale. Among many theoretical candidates for dark matter, weakly interacting massive particles are the most popular and well-motivated. A thermal relic of the early Universe with a weak scale interaction and mass ranging from a tens of GeV to a tens of TeV naturally gives the measured present-day cold dark matter density. The identification of the particle nature of the dark matter, through the indirect detection of its annihilation or decay products in astrophysical regions of high dark matter density, has motivated numerous efforts in the past few decades with the development of satellite-borne and ground-based gamma-ray telescopes. I will present here a status of the current dark matter searches with the VERITAS observatory, an array of 4 imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes operating since 2007 in southern Arizona and designed for the detection of gamma-rays with energies greater than 100 GeV.