Constraining dark matter capture and annihilation cross sections by searching for neutrino signature from the Earth's core

Constraining dark matter capture and annihilation cross sections by searching for neutrino signature from the Earth’s core

Fei-Fan Lee, Guey-Lin Lin, and Yue-Lin Sming Tsai

Phys. Rev. D 89, 025003 – Published 6 January 2014

Abstract

We study the sensitivity of IceCube/DeepCore detector to dark matter annihilations in the Earth’s core. We focus on annihilation modes $χ χ \to ν \bar{ν}$ , $τ^{+} τ^{-}$ , $b \bar{b}$ , and $W^{+} W^{-}$ . Both track and cascade events are considered in our analysis. By fixing the dark matter annihilation cross section $⟨ σ υ ⟩$ at some nominal values, we study the sensitivity of the IceCube/DeepCore detector to dark matter spin-independent cross section $σ_{p}^{SI}$ for $m_{χ}$ ranging from few tens of GeV to 10 TeV. This sensitivity is compared with the existing IceCube 79-string constraint on the same cross section, which was obtained by searching for dark matter annihilations in the Sun. We compare this sensitivity to dark matter direct detection results as well, in particular the XENON100 (2012) limit and the parameter regions preferred by DAMA and CRESST-II experiments. We also present IceCube/DeepCore sensitivity to $⟨ σ υ ⟩$ as a function of $m_{χ}$ by fixing $σ_{p}^{SI}$ at XENON100 (2012) and XENON1T limits, respectively. This sensitivity is compared with the preferred dark matter parameter range derived from the combined fitting to PAMELA and AMS02 positron fraction data. We conclude that the search for dark matter annihilations in the Earth’s core provides competitive constraints on $σ_{p}^{SI}$ and $⟨ σ υ ⟩$ in the case of low-mass dark matter. Particularly, the expected constraint on $σ_{p}^{SI}$ for 5 years of data taking in IceCube/DeepCore is more stringent than the current IceCube 79-string limit mentioned above.