Towards detecting super-GeV dark matter via annihilation to neutrinos

Abstract The next generation of neutrino telescopes will feature unprecedented sensitivities in the detection of neutrinos. Here we study the capabilities of a large-scale neutrino telescope, like the fully-operating KM3NeT experiment in the near future, for detecting dark matter annihilation signal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Main Authors: Salvador Miranda, L., Basegmez du Pree, S., Ng, K.C.Y., Cheek, A., Arina, C.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: IOP Publishing 2023
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Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/08/006
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/08/006
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2023/08/006/pdf
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Summary:Abstract The next generation of neutrino telescopes will feature unprecedented sensitivities in the detection of neutrinos. Here we study the capabilities of a large-scale neutrino telescope, like the fully-operating KM3NeT experiment in the near future, for detecting dark matter annihilation signals from the Galactic Centre. We consider both ORCA and ARCA detectors, covering dark matter masses from a few GeV to 100 TeV. We obtain the sensitivities with a maximum-likelihood analysis method and present them as upper limits in the thermally averaged annihilation cross-section into Standard Model fermions. Our projections show that the sensitivity of such a neutrino telescope can reach the thermal relic line for m χ ≳ 1 TeV and for m χ ≃ few GeV, for the NFW dark matter density profile. This demonstrates that ORCA- and ARCA-like detectors will be able to perform competitive dark matter searches in a wide range of masses. The implications of these striking projections are investigated in a few selected dark matter particle models, where we show that neutrino telescopes are able to probe new parameter space.