Speaker
Description
Recent observations of a variety of ionization tracers have revealed an unexpectedly high ionization rate in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), that cannot be explained by ionization of cosmic rays. The current observations point to a source of particles that is very concentrated around the Galactic Center and should emit low energy ionizing particles (to avoid propagating too far away from the CMZ). In this talk, I'll show that the anomalous ionization rate observed in the CMZ can be attributed to MeV dark matter annihilation for galactic dark matter profiles with slopes γ > 1 and that the low annihilation cross-sections required avoid (by a few orders of magnitude) the current cosmological constraints and imply no detectable inverse Compton, bremsstrahlung or synchrotron emissions in radio, X and gamma rays.
Moreover, I'll discuss the possible common origin of this anomaly with the puzzling 511 keV line emission in the Galactic Center
