Alexey Boyarsky

We improve the earlier restrictions on parameters of the dark matter (DM) in the form of a sterile neutrino. The results were obtained from non-observing the DM decay line in the X-ray spectrum of the Milky Way (using the recent XMM-Newton PN blank sky data). We also present a similar constraint coming from the recent XMM-Newton observation of Ursa Minor -- dark, X-ray quiet dwarf spheroidal galaxy. The new Milky way data improve on (by as much as the order of magnitude at masses ~3.5 keV) existing constraints. Although the observation of Ursa Minor has relatively poor statistics, the constraints are comparable to those recently obtained using observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud or M31. This confirms a recent proposal that dwarf satellites of the MW are very interesting candidates for the DM search and dedicated studies should be made to this purpose.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

In theories with chiral couplings, one of the important consistency requirements is that of the cancellation of a gauge anomaly. In particular, this is one of the conditions imposed on the hypercharges in the standard model. However, anomaly cancellation condition of the standard model looks unnatural from the perspective of a theory with extra dimensions. Indeed, if our world were embedded into an odd-dimensional space, then the full theory would be automatically anomaly-free. In this paper we discuss the physical consequences of anomaly noncancellation for effective 4-dimensional field theory. We demonstrate that in such a theory parallel electric and magnetic fields get modified. In particular, this happens for any particle possessing both electric charge and magnetic moment. This effect, if observed, can serve as a low energy signature of extra dimensions. On the other hand, if such an effect is absent or is very small, then from the point of view of any theory with extra dimensions it is just another fine-tuning and should acquire theoretical explanation.