The New DAMA Dark-Matter Window and Energetic-Neutrino Searches

Abstract

Recently, the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration has repeated and reinforced their claim to have detected an annual modulation in their signal rate, and have interpreted this observation as evidence for dark-matter particles at the 8.2 sigma confidence level. Furthermore, it has also been noted that the effects of channeling may enable a WIMP that scatters elastically via spin-independent interactions from nuclei to produce the signal observed by DAMA/LIBRA without exceeding the limits placed by CDMS, XENON, CRESST, CoGeNT and other direct-detection experiments. To accommodate this signal, however, the mass of the responsible dark-matter particle must be relatively light, m_{DM} \lsim 10 GeV. Such dark-matter particles will become captured by and annihilate in the Sun at very high rates, leading to a potentially large flux of GeV-scale neutrinos. We calculate the neutrino spectrum resulting from WIMP annihilations in the Sun and show that existing limits from Super-Kamiokande can be used to close a significant portion of the DAMA region, especially if the dark-matter particles produce tau leptons or neutrinos in a sizable fraction of their annihilations. We also determine the spin-dependent WIMP-nuclei elastic-scattering parameter space consistent with DAMA. The constraints from Super-Kamiokande on the spin-dependent scenario are even more severe--they exclude any self-annihilating WIMP in the DAMA region that annihilates 1% of the time or more to any combination of neutrinos, tau leptons, or charm or bottom quarks.

13 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (10)

• First results from DAMA/LIBRA and the combined results with DAMA/NaI
• Possible implications of the channeling effect in NaI(Tl) crystals
• Improved Spin-Dependent WIMP Limits from a Bubble Chamber
• Experimental constraints on a dark matter origin for the DAMA annual modulation effect
• Interpreting the recent results on direct search for dark matter particles in terms of relic neutralino
• Mirror dark matter and the new DAMA/LIBRA results: A simple explanation for a beautiful experiment
• DAMA and WIMP dark matter
• Indirect detection of light neutralino dark matter in the NMSSM
• Zooming in on light relic neutralinos by direct detection and measurements of galactic antimatter
• Channeling Effect and Improvement of the Efficiency of Charged Particle Registration with Crystal Scintillators

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• Results from a Search for Light-Mass Dark Matter with a P-type Point Contact Germanium Detector
• Asymmetric Dark Matter
• Exothermic Dark Matter
• XENON10/100 dark matter constraints in comparison with CoGeNT and DAMA: examining the Leff dependence
• New Limits on Dark Matter from Super-Kamiokande
• Discussing direct search of dark matter particles in the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model with light neutralinos
• Luminous Dark Matter
• Compatibility of DAMA/LIBRA dark matter detection with other searches in light of new Galactic rotation velocity measurements
• Enhancing Dark Matter Annihilation into Neutrinos
• AMEND: A Model Explaining Neutrino masses and Dark matter testable at the LHC and MEG
• Search for Dark Matter
• Muon Fluxes From Dark Matter Annihilation
• Search for neutrinos from annihilation of captured low-mass dark matter particles in the Sun by Super-Kamiokande
• $\chi$aro$\nu$: a tool for neutrino flux generation from WIMPs
• Fermion WIMPless Dark Matter at DeepCore and IceCube
• A halo-independent lower bound on the dark matter capture rate in the Sun from a direct detection signal
• Neutrinos from the Sun can discover dark matter-electron scattering
• Searching for Dark Matter in the Sun using Hyper-Kamiokande
• Extending the Dark Matter Reach of Water Cherenkov Detectors using Jupiter
• Can local White Dwarfs constrain Dark Matter interactions?
• Searching for dark matter annihilation in the Sun with the IceCube Upgrade