Tuesday, August 7, 2012

1208.0827 (Carsten Rott et al.)

New Sensitivity to Solar WIMP Annihilation using Low-Energy Neutrinos    [PDF]

Carsten Rott, Jennifer Siegal-Gaskins, John F. Beacom
Dark matter particles captured by the Sun through scattering may annihilate and produce neutrinos, which escape. Current searches are for the few high-energy neutrinos produced in the prompt decays of some final states. We show that interactions in the solar medium lead to a large number of pions for nearly all final states. Positive pions and muons decay at rest, producing low-energy neutrinos with known spectra, including nuebar through neutrino mixing. We demonstrate that Super-Kamiokande can thereby provide a new probe of the spin-dependent WIMP-proton cross section. Compared to other methods, the sensitivity is competitive and the uncertainties are complementary.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0827

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