Neutrino Signals from Dark Matter

Abstract

Large-scale neutrino telescopes will be powerful tools to observe multitude of mysterious phenomena happening in the Universe. The dark matter puzzle is listed as one of them. In this study, indirect detection of dark matter via neutrino signals is presented. The upward muon, the contained muon and the hadronic shower fluxes are calculated, assuming annihilation/decay of the dark matter in the core of the astrophysical objects and in the Galactic center. Direct neutrino production and secondary neutrino production from the decay of Standard Model particles produced in the annihilation/decay of dark matter are studied. The results are contrasted to the ones previously obtained in the literature, illustrating the importance of properly treating muon propagation and energy loss for the upward muon flux. The dependence of the dark matter signals on the density profile, the dark matter mass and the detector threshold are discussed. Different dark matter models (gravitino, Kaluza-Klein and leptophilic) which can account for recent observations of some indirect searches are analyzed regarding their detection in the kilometer size neutrino detectors in the near future. Muon and shower rates and the minimum observation times in order to reach 2σ detection significance are evaluated, with the result suggesting that the optimum cone half angles chosen about the Galactic center are about 10° (50°) for the muon (shower) events. A detailed analysis shows that for the annihilating dark matter models such as the leptophilic and Kaluza-Klein models, upward and contained muon as well as showers yield promising signals for dark matter detection in just a few years of observation, whereas for decaying dark matter models, the same observation times can only be reached with showers. The analytical results for the final fluxes are also obtained as well as parametric forms for the muon and shower fluxes for the dark matter models considered in this study.