Published January 2008 | Version v1
Journal article

Neutrinos from WIMP annihilations obtained using a full three-flavor Monte Carlo approach

  • 1. Department of Theoretical Physics, School of Engineering Sciences, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)—AlbaNova University Center, Roslagstullsbacken 21, 106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
  • 2. Department of Physics, Stockholm University—AlbaNova University Center, Roslagstullsbacken 21, 106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)

Description

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are one of the main candidates for making up the dark matter in the Universe. If these particles make up the dark matter, then they can be captured by the Sun or the Earth, sink to the respective cores, annihilate, and produce neutrinos. Thus, these neutrinos can be a striking dark matter signature at neutrino telescopes looking towards the Sun and/or the Earth. Here, we improve previous analyses on computing the neutrino yields from WIMP annihilations in several respects. We include neutrino oscillations in a full three-flavor framework as well as all effects from neutrino interactions on the way through the Sun (absorption, energy loss, and regeneration from tau decays). In addition, we study the effects of non-zero values of the mixing angle θ13 as well as the normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchies. Our study is performed in an event-based setting which makes these results very useful both for theoretical analyses and for building a neutrino telescope Monte Carlo code. All our results for the neutrino yields, as well as our Monte Carlo code, are publicly available. We find that the yield of muon-type neutrinos from WIMP annihilations in the Sun is enhanced or suppressed, depending on the dominant WIMP annihilation channel. This effect is due to an effective flavor mixing caused by neutrino oscillations. For WIMP annihilations inside the Earth, the distance from source to detector is too small to allow for any significant amount of oscillations at the neutrino energies relevant for neutrino telescopes

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/01/021

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1088/1475-7516/2008/01/021;
PII
S1475-7516(08)68847-3;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Journal Volume
2008
Journal Issue
01
Journal Page Range
[23 p.]
ISSN
1475-7516