Astrophysical limitations to the identification of dark matter: indirect neutrino signals vis-a-vis direct detection recoil rates

Abstract

A convincing identification of dark matter (DM) particles can probably be achieved only through a combined analysis of different detections strategies, which provides an effective way of removing degeneracies in the parameter space of DM models. In practice, however, this program is made complicated by the fact that different strategies depend on different physical quantities, or on the same quantities but in a different way, making the treatment of systematic errors rather tricky. We discuss here the uncertainties on the recoil rate in direct detection experiments and on the muon rate induced by neutrinos from dark matter annihilations in the Sun, and we show that, contrarily to the local DM density or overall cross section scale, irreducible astrophysical uncertainties affect the two rates in a different fashion, therefore limiting our ability to reconstruct the parameters of the dark matter particle. By varying within their respective errors astrophysical parameters such as the escape velocity and the velocity dispersion of dark matter particles, we show that the uncertainty on the relative strength of the neutrino and direct-detection signal is as large as a factor of two for typical values of the parameters, but can be even larger in some circumstances.

12 pages, 3 figures. Improved presentation and Fig.3; clarifications, references and an appendix added; conclusions unchanged. Matches version published in PRD

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• Impact of Dark Matter Velocity Distributions on Capture Rates in the Sun
• How well will ton-scale dark matter direct detection experiments constrain minimal supersymmetry?
• Complementarity of direct and indirect Dark Matter detection experiments
• The capture of dark matter particles through the evolution of low-mass stars
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• Probing neutralino dark matter in the MSSM & the NMSSM with directional detection
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• Dark Matter Searches: The Nightmare Scenario
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• A halo-independent lower bound on the dark matter capture rate in the Sun from a direct detection signal