Imaging Galactic Dark Matter with High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos
Name
PhysRevLett.119.201801.pdf
Size
1.07 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8f062bab08b3bcfd56b5309ce95d1f0e
Author(s)
Kheirandish, Ali
Vincent, Aaron C.
Arguelles Delgado, Carlos A
Date Issued
November 2017
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Argüelles, Carlos A. et al. "Imaging Galactic Dark Matter with High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos." Physical Review Letters 119, 20 (November 2017): 201801 © 2017 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We show that the high-energy cosmic neutrinos seen by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory can be used to probe interactions between neutrinos and the dark sector that cannot be reached by current cosmological methods. The origin of the observed neutrinos is still unknown, and their arrival directions are compatible with an isotropic distribution. This observation, together with dedicated studies of Galactic plane correlations, suggests a predominantly extragalactic origin. Interactions between this isotropic extragalactic flux and the dense dark matter (DM) bulge of the Milky Way would thus lead to an observable imprint on the distribution, which would be seen by IceCube as (i) slightly suppressed fluxes at energies below a PeV and (ii) a deficit of events in the direction of the Galactic center. We perform an extended unbinned likelihood analysis using the four-year high-energy starting event data set to constrain the strength of DM-neutrino interactions for two model classes. We find that, in spite of low statistics, IceCube can probe regions of the parameter space inaccessible to current cosmological methods.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.201801
