Year: 2020
Type: peer-review
Abstract: An unidentified line at energy around 3.5 keV was detected in the spectra of dark matter-dominated objects.Recent work (1) used 30 Msec of XMM-Newton blank-sky observations to constrain the admissible line flux, challenging its dark matter decay origin.We demonstrate that these bounds are overestimated by more than an order of magnitude due to improper background modeling.Therefore the dark matter interpretation of the 3.5 keV signal remains viable.An X-ray line at E 3.5 keV has been found in 2014 (2, 3).Many consistency checks, as well as follow-up detections, have been reported, while non-detections have not ruled out the dark matter interpretation of the signal (see (4) for review).Ref. (1) (DRS20 in what follows) recently reported bounds on the decay lifetime, which are about an order of magnitude below
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Awards: G2762212498, G5548133524, G599676264
OpenAlex ID: W3159024070