Annihilation of NMSSM neutralinos in the Sun and neutrino telescope limits

TL;DR

This paper explores the detection prospects of NMSSM neutralino dark matter via neutrino telescopes, recalculating cross-section limits from neutrino flux bounds and providing universal constraints independent of experimental specifics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to derive neutralino-proton cross section limits directly from neutrino telescope data, improving upon previous approaches by being more universal and less experiment-dependent.

Findings

Derived 90% confidence level upper limits on neutralino-proton cross sections.

Recalculated limits are independent of experimental details and model-specific coefficients.

Applied method to Baksan Telescope data to set new constraints.

Abstract

We investigate neutralino dark matter in the framework of NMSSM performing a scan over its parameter space and calculating neutralino capture and annihilation rates in the Sun. We discuss the prospects of searches for neutralino dark matter in neutrino experiments depending on neutralino content and its main annihilation channel. We recalculate the upper limits on neutralino-proton elastic cross sections directly from neutrino telescopes upper bounds on annihilation rates in the Sun. This procedure has advantages as compared with corresponding recalcalations from the limits on muon flux, namely, it is independent on details of the experiment and the recalculation coefficients are universal for any kind of WIMP dark matter models. We derive 90% c.l. upper limits on neutralino-proton cross sections from the results of the Baksan Underground Scintillator Telescope.