A novel method to extract dark matter parameters from neutrino telescope data

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new method to determine dark matter properties by analyzing seasonal variations in neutrino flux from the Sun, caused by neutrino oscillations during dark matter annihilation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using seasonal neutrino flux variations to extract dark matter parameters, including mass and annihilation mode flavor structure.

Findings

Seasonal neutrino flux variations can reveal dark matter mass.

Neutrino oscillation effects provide insights into dark matter annihilation modes.

Numerical simulations support the feasibility of the method.

Abstract

Recently it has been shown that when the Dark Matter (DM) particles captured in the Sun directly annihilate into neutrino pairs, the oscillatory terms in the oscillation probability do not average to zero and can lead to a seasonal variation as the distance between the Sun and Earth changes in time. In this paper, we explore this feature as a novel method to extract information on the properties of dark matter. We show that by studying the variation of the flux over a few months, it would in principle be possible to derive the DM mass as well as new information on the flavor structure of the DM annihilation modes. In addition to analytic analysis, we present the results of our numerical calculations that take into account scattering and regeneration of neutrinos traversing the Sun.