A&A 471, 51–57 (2007) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20066774 & c ESO 2007 Astrophysics Constraints on the parameters of radiatively decaying dark matter from the dark matter halos of the Milky Way and Ursa Minor A. Boyarsky1,2,3, J. Nevalainen4, and O. Ruchayskiy5,2 1 CERN, PH-TH, 1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland e-mail:
[email protected] 2 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Theoretical Physics, FSB/ITP/LPPC, BSP 720, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 3 On leave of absence from Bogolyubov Institute of Theoretical Physics, Kyiv, Ukraine 4 Helsinki University Observatory, Finland e-mail:
[email protected] 5 Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, 91440 Bures-sur-Yvette, France e-mail:
[email protected] Received 20 November 2006 / Accepted 19 April 2007 ABSTRACT Aims. We improve the earlier restrictions on parameters of the warm dark matter (DM) in the form of a sterile neutrinos. Methods. The results were obtained from not 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. Results. 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 M 31. 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.