Superheavy Dark Matter and ANITA's Anomalous Events

Abstract

The ANITA experiment, which is designed to detect ultra-high energy neutrinos, has reported the observation of two anomalous events, directed at angles of $27^{\circ }$ and $35^{\circ }$ with respect to the horizontal. At these angles, the Earth is expected to efficiently absorb ultra-high energy neutrinos, making the origin of these events unclear and motivating explanations involving physics beyond the Standard Model. In this study, we consider the possibility that ANITA's anomalous events are the result of Askaryan emission produced by exotic weakly interacting particles scattering elastically with nuclei in the Antarctic ice sheet. Such particles could be produced by superheavy ($\sim 10^{10}-10^{13}$ GeV) dark matter particles decaying in the halo of the Milky Way. Such scenarios can be constrained by existing measurements of the high-latitude gamma-ray background and the ultra-high energy cosmic ray spectrum, along with searches for ultra-high energy neutrinos by IceCube and other neutrino telescopes.

arXiv comment6 page, 5 figures

References in corpus (49)

• Neutrino Interactions at Ultrahigh Energies
• Ultra-high energy cosmic rays without GZK cutoff
• Cosmogenic Neutrinos: parameter space and detectabilty from PeV to ZeV
• Differential limit on the extremely-high-energy cosmic neutrino flux in the presence of astrophysical background from nine years of IceCube data
• Extremely high energy cosmic rays from relic particle decays
• Observational Constraints on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the Second Flight of the ANITA Experiment
• Erratum: Observational Constraints on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the Second Flight of the ANITA Experiment
• The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna Ultra-high Energy Neutrino Detector Design, Performance, and Sensitivity for 2006-2007 Balloon Flight
• Observations of the Askaryan Effect in Ice
• Characteristics of Four Upward-pointing Cosmic-ray-like Events Observed with ANITA
• Observation of an Unusual Upward-going Cosmic-ray-like Event in the Third Flight of ANITA
• Superheavy dark matter and IceCube neutrino signals:bounds on decaying dark matter
• Limits on Topological Defects Models of the Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Constraining Very Heavy Dark Matter Using Diffuse Backgrounds of Neutrinos and Cascaded Gamma Rays
• Extracting the Energy-Dependent Neutrino-Nucleon Cross Section Above 10 TeV Using IceCube Showers
• New Limits on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the ANITA Experiment
• Cosmogenic photon and neutrino fluxes in the Auger era
• Constraints on the ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino flux from the fourth flight of ANITA
• Minimal Cosmogenic Neutrinos
• Probing the stability of superheavy dark matter particles with high-energy neutrinos
• Probing Grand Unified Theories with Cosmic Ray, Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Astrophysics
• Constraints on the diffuse high-energy neutrino flux from the third flight of ANITA
• Constraints on Decaying Dark Matter from the Isotropic Gamma-Ray Background
• Predictions for the Cosmogenic Neutrino Flux in Light of New Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Indications of Negative Evolution for the Sources of the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays
• Cosmogenic Neutrinos Challenge the Cosmic Ray Proton Dip Model
• Detailed analysis of the decay spectrum of a super-heavy X particle
• Ultra-high energy cosmic rays from annihilation of superheavy dark matter
• Production of ultra-energetic cosmic rays through the decay of super-heavy X particles
• Stable Superstring Relics and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Gravitino Decay in High Scale Supersymmetry with R-parity Violation
• A comprehensive analysis of anomalous ANITA events disfavors a diffuse tau-neutrino flux origin
• A Sterile Neutrino Origin for the Upward Directed Cosmic Ray Showers Detected by ANITA
• R-parity Violating Supersymmetric Explanation of the Anomalous Events at ANITA
• Upgoing ANITA events as evidence of the CPT symmetric universe
• A Dark Matter Interpretation of the ANITA Anomalous Events
• Sterile neutrinos as a possible explanation for the upward air shower events at ANITA
• Measuring High Energy Neutrino-Nucleon Cross Sections With Future Neutrino Telescopes
• Neutrinos Associated With Cosmic Rays of Top-Down Origin
• Ultra-high energy LSP
• Leptoquark solution for both the flavor and ANITA anomalies
• Decaying Superheavy Dark Matter and Subgalactic Structure of the Universe
• Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with a km^3 neutrino telescope
• SUSY In The Sky: Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Neutralinos
• Can transition radiation explain the ANITA event 3985267?
• Neutralino spectrum in top-down models of UHECR
• Probing mSUGRA via the Extreme Universe Space Observatory
• The Passage of Ultrarelativistic Neutralinos through Matter
• Signals of Very High Energy Neutralinos in Future Cosmic Ray Detectors

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Dark Matter Annihilation to Neutrinos
• The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO): A White Paper
• Addressing $R_{D^{(\ast )}}$, $R_{K^{(\ast )}}$, muon $g-2$ and ANITA anomalies in a minimal $R$-parity violating supersymmetric framework
• POEMMA's Target of Opportunity Sensitivity to Cosmic Neutrino Transient Sources
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Unified explanation of flavor anomalies, radiative neutrino mass and ANITA anomalous events in a vector leptoquark model
• $(g-2{)}_{\mu ,e}$ and the ANITA anomalous events in a three-loop neutrino mass model
• A search for IceCube events in the direction of ANITA neutrino candidates
• Reflections On the Anomalous ANITA Events: The Antarctic Subsurface as a Possible Explanation
• Explaining the ANITA Anomaly with Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter
• Observing EeV neutrinos through the Earth: GZK and the anomalous ANITA events
• A Model of Metastable EeV Dark Matter
• Dark Matter Candidates and Searches
• The ANITA Anomalous Events and Axion Quark Nuggets
• Analysis of a Tau Neutrino Origin for the Near-Horizon Air Shower Events Observed by the Fourth Flight of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)
• Explaining the ANITA events by a $L_e-L_{\tau }$ gauge model
• Prospects for discovering supersymmetric long-lived particles with MoEDAL
• Computation of Gravitational Particle Production Using Adiabatic Invariants
• Connecting ANITA Anomalous Events to a Non-thermal Dark Matter Scenario
• Anomalous ANITA air shower events and tau decays
• The pros and cons of beyond standard model interpretations of ANITA events
• Testing Heavy Neutral Leptons in Cosmic Ray Beam Dump experiments
• IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events
• General Treatment of Reflection of Spherical Electromagnetic Waves from a Spherical Surface and its Implications for the ANITA Anomalous Polarity Events