Constraints on Enhanced Dark Matter Annihilation from IceCube Results

Abstract

Excesses on positron and electron fluxes measured by ATIC, and the PAMELA and Fermi--LAT telescopes can be explained by dark matter annihilation in our Galaxy. However, this requires large boosts on the dark matter annihilation rate. There are many possible enhancement mechanisms, such as the Sommerfeld effect or the existence of dark matter clumps in our halo. If enhancements on the dark matter annihilation cross section are taking place, the dark matter annihilation in the core of the Earth should also be enhanced. Here we use recent results from the IceCube 40-string configuration to probe generic enhancement scenarios. We present results as a function of the dark matter-proton interaction cross section, ${\sigma }_{\chi p}$ weighted by the branching fraction into neutrinos, $f_{\nu \bar{\nu }}$, as a function of a generic boost factor, $B_F$, which parametrizes the expected enhancement of the annihilation rate. We find that dark matter models which require annihilation enhancements of $\mathcal{O}(100)$ or more and that annihilate significantly into neutrinos are excluded as the explanation for these excesses. We also determine the boost range that can be probed by the full IceCube telescope.

6 pages, 3 figures; version accepted for publication

References in corpus (16)

• Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Dark Matter Results from 100 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• Constraining Dark Matter Models from a Combined Analysis of Milky Way Satellites with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• A new measurement of the antiproton-to-proton flux ratio up to 100 GeV in the cosmic radiation
• PAMELA results on the cosmic-ray antiproton flux from 60 MeV to 180 GeV in kinetic energy
• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• The origin of the positron excess in cosmic rays
• Measurement of the atmospheric neutrino energy spectrum from 100 GeV to 400 TeV with IceCube
• Updated CMB constraints on Dark Matter annihilation cross-sections
• Neutrinos from WIMP Annihilations Obtained Using a Full Three-Flavor Monte Carlo Approach
• WMAP7 and future CMB constraints on annihilating dark matter: implications for GeV-scale WIMPs
• Search for Dark Matter from the Galactic Halo with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• A Search for a Diffuse Flux of Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos with the IceCube 40-String Detector
• Consistent Scenarios for Cosmic-Ray Excesses from Sommerfeld-Enhanced Dark Matter Annihilation
• Probing Dark Matter Dynamics via Earthborn Neutrinos at IceCube
• Consequences of a Dark Disk for the Fermi and PAMELA Signals in Theories with a Sommerfeld Enhancement

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Dark matter electron anisotropy: a universal upper limit
• Searching for High Energy Neutrino counterpart signals; The case of the Fermi Bubbles signal and of Dark Matter annihilation in the inner Galaxy
• Sensitivities of IceCube DeepCore Detector to Signatures of Low-Mass Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo
• Probing the coupling of heavy dark matter to nucleons by detecting neutrino signature from the Earth's core
• Constraining dark matter capture and annihilation cross sections by searching for neutrino signature from the Earth core