Dark matter in the solar system II: WIMP annihilation rates in the Sun

Abstract

We calculate the annihilation rate of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the Sun as a function of their mass and elastic scattering cross section. One byproduct of the annihilation, muon neutrinos, may be observed by the next generation of neutrino telescopes. Previous estimates of the annihilation rate assumed that any WIMPs from the Galactic dark halo that are captured in the Sun by elastic scattering off solar nuclei quickly reach thermal equilibrium in the Sun. We show that the optical depth of the Sun to WIMPs and the gravitational forces from planets both serve to decrease the annihilation rate below these estimates. While we find that the sensitivity of upcoming km^3-scale neutrino telescopes to ~100 GeV WIMPs is virtually unchanged from previous estimates, the sensitivity of these experiments to ~10 TeV WIMPs may be an order of magnitude less than the standard calculations would suggest. The new estimates of the annihilation rates should guide future experiment design and improve the mapping from neutrino event rates to WIMP parameter space.

12 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted

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Cited by in corpus (23)

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• Dark matter in the solar system I: The distribution function of WIMPs at the Earth from solar capture
• Dark matter in the solar system III: The distribution function of WIMPs at the Earth from gravitational capture
• Search for GeV-scale Dark Matter Annihilation in the Sun with IceCube DeepCore
• Use of event-level neutrino telescope data in global fits for theories of new physics
• Solar Gamma Ray Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation to Secluded Mediators
• Neutrinos from captured dark matter annihilation in a galactic population of neutron stars
• Direct Detection of Dark Matter -- APPEC Committee Report
• A tale of dark matter capture, sub-dominant WIMPs, and neutrino observatories
• Probing WIMP particle physics and astrophysics with direct detection and neutrino telescope data
• The Sun at GeV--TeV Energies: A New Laboratory for Astroparticle Physics
• Solar constraints on captured electrophilic dark matter
• A halo of trapped interstellar matter surrounding the solar system
• A halo-independent lower bound on the dark matter capture rate in the Sun from a direct detection signal
• Anti-Matter in Cosmic Rays : Backgrounds and Signals
• Neutrinos from the Sun can discover dark matter-electron scattering
• Indirect Detection of Dark Matter in the Galaxy
• Dark Kinetic Heating of Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs
• Multi-frequency test of dark matter annihilation into long-lived particles in Sirius
• Prospects for the detection of Dark Matter with Long-lived Mediators in the Sun using the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory
• Searching for Dark Matter in the Sun using Hyper-Kamiokande
• Orbital Dynamics of the Solar Basin
• Gravitational Focusing of Low-Velocity Dark Matter on the Earth's Surface