In a new publication that just appeared in Physical Review Letters, we make use of a very extensive set of observations that we have taken towards the direction of the inner Milky Way to search for signals from dark matter. Near the Galactic Centre, the density of dark matter is expected to be high, leading to an enhanced probability that two dark-matter particles annihilate with each other. In this work, we have searched for a so-called line-like signal – an excess of gamma rays with a fixed energy that corresponds to the dark-matter particle mass. Not having found such a signal, we were able to set world-leading upper limits on the annihilation cross section, starting to rule out some widely explored dark-matter particle models. This work was also covered in the August 2026 Source of the Month!

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Journal reference: Physical Review Letters 137, 091002 (2026)