Dark matter annihilation in the halo of the Milky Way

If the dark matter in the Universe is made of weakly self-interacting particles, they may self-annihilate and emit γ-rays. We use high-resolution numerical simulations to estimate directly the annihilation flux from the central regions of the Milky Way and from dark matter substructures in its halo. Although such estimates remain uncertain because of their strong dependence on the structure of the densest regions, our numerical experiments suggest that less direct calculations have overestimated the emission both from the centre and from the halo substructure. We estimate a maximal enhancement of at most a factor of a few with respect to a smooth spherical halo of standard Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) structure. We discuss detection strategies for the next generation of γ-ray detectors and find that the annihilation flux may be detectable, regardless of uncertainties about the densest regions, for the annihilation cross-sections predicted by currently popular elementary particle models for the dark matter.