Dark Matter Annihilation Inside Large Volume Neutrino Detectors

N3AS-23-007

Dark Matter Annihilation Inside Large Volume Neutrino Detectors

David McKeen, David E. Morrissey, Maxim Pospelov, Harikrishnan Ramani, Anupam Ray.
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Abstract

New stable particles are generic predictions of theories beyond the Standard Model and can manifest as relics that interact strongly with visible matter and make up a small fraction of the total dark matter abundance. Such particles represent an interesting physics target since they can evade existing bounds from direct detection due to their rapid thermalization in high-density environments. In this work we point out that their annihilation to visible matter inside large-volume neutrino telescopes can provide a new way to constrain or discover such particles. The signal is the most pronounced for relic masses in the GeV range, and can be efficiently constrained by existing Super-Kamiokande searches for di-nucleon annihilation. We also provide an explicit realization of this scenario in the form of secluded dark matter coupled to a dark photon, and we show that the present method implies novel and stringent bounds on the model that are complementary to direct constraints from beam dumps, colliders, and direct detection experiments.

Associated Fellows