Direct Detection Constraints on Dark Matter Event Rates in Neutrino Telescopes, and Collider Implications

TL;DR

This paper establishes model-independent upper bounds on dark matter detection rates in neutrino telescopes based on direct detection constraints, highlighting implications for dark matter particle properties and collider searches.

Contribution

It provides the first model-independent bounds linking direct detection limits to neutrino telescope event rates, and discusses collider implications for certain dark matter candidates.

Findings

Spin-independent cross section bounds are more restrictive and competitive with IceCube limits.

Excess neutrino events suggest dark matter interactions are dominated by spin-dependent interactions.

Observable neutrino signals imply new particles accessible at the LHC.

Abstract

Neutrino telescopes are looking to detect neutrinos produced by the annihilation of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter in the sun. The event rate depends on the dark matter density in the sun, which in turn is dictated by the cross section of WIMPs with nucleons. This however is bounded by direct detection experiments. We use the constraints from these experiments to place model-independent upper bounds on the event rates in neutrino telescopes that apply to any elastic dark matter model. Since the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section is much more tightly constrained than the corresponding spin-dependent cross section, the bounds are much stronger in the former case and are competitive with the current limits from IceCube. If the number of events observed in neutrino telescopes exceeds the upper bound corresponding to spin-independent interactions, the implication is that the cross section of dark matter with nucleons is dominated by spin-dependent interactions. In such a scenario the natural dark matter candidates are Majorana fermions and real vector bosons, so that dark matter particles are their own anti-particles. We show that any such theory that leads to observable event rates at current generation neutrino telescopes will in general contain new particles charged under the Standard Model gauge groups that naturally lie in a mass range that is kinematically accessible to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).