M. E. Monzani - The spectrum of Cosmic Ray Electrons and Positrons and Searches for Dark Matter with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

by Maria Elena Monzani (SLAC Stanford)

Thursday 20 Sept 2012, 14:30 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Pontecorvo room (LNGS)

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an international satellite observatory designed to study the high-energy Universe. In four years after its launch in June 2008, Fermi has recorded a remarkable variety of novel observations from the most energetic sources in the sky, like black holes, rapidly-spinning neutron stars, supernova remnants, gamma-ray bursts as well as cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar gas and radiation fields in the Milky Way and other galaxies. High energy cosmic-ray electrons and positrons up to 1 TeV were also directly measured. These observations are providing invaluable, new insights into fundamental questions of high energy astrophysics and astro-particle physics, such as, among others, particle acceleration mechanisms, production and propagation of cosmic-rays, and constraints to the nature of Dark Matter. In this talk I will describe the measurements of the cosmic-ray electron and positron spectra performed by the Fermi Large Area Telescope and I will review our ongoing searches for Dark Matter. ------------------------------------ Maria Elena Monzani SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Stanford, USA