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A Search for Neutrinos from Decaying Dark Matter in Galaxy Clusters and Galaxies with IceCube

Abstract:

The existence of dark matter has been well established by a variety of astronomical observations, but the particle nature of dark matter still remains unknown. Various theories, beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, propose candidates for dark matter. Among those, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) have been the most extensively studied candidates, for a number of reasons. WIMPs naturally explain the abundance of dark matter in the present Universe [1]. On the other hand, the mass scale allowed for WIMPs is limited up to∼ 100 TeV, due to the unitarity bound [2], and thus accessible by current instruments. However, decaying heavy dark matter, which was non-thermally produced in the early Universe and has a longer lifetime than the age of the Universe, is also a viable candidate for dark matter [3, 4]. Neutrinos are useful tools for testing dark matter hypotheses. When dark matter pair-annihilates or decays, neutrinos could be produced directly or through the decay of the primary products. Hence, the properties of dark matter can be constrained by measuring the neutrino flux from celestial objects which host a large amount of dark matter. Neutrinos have several advantages over other messenger particles. They are not affected by magnetic fields and have extremely small cross-sections. Thus, their directions can be better associated with their origins. Also, they are barely absorbed at their production site. This provides unique opportunities to search for dark matter in the core of the Sun and the Earth [5–7]. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory [8] is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino telescope deployed in the deep glacial ice in …