Probing WIMP particle physics and astrophysics with direct detection and neutrino telescope data

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that combining data from direct detection experiments and neutrino telescopes like IceCube enables unbiased measurements of WIMP dark matter properties, including mass, cross sections, and speed distribution, overcoming previous limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to jointly analyze direct detection and neutrino data to accurately determine WIMP parameters without astrophysical assumptions.

Findings

Neutrino flux measurements help break degeneracies in WIMP cross section estimates.

Combined data allows for unbiased reconstruction of WIMP mass and speed distribution.

Polynomial speed distribution parameterization captures a wider range of models but increases uncertainties.

Abstract

With positive signals from multiple direct detection experiments it will, in principle, be possible to measure the mass and cross sections of weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. Recent work has shown that, with a polynomial parameterisation of the WIMP speed distribution, it is possible to make an unbiased measurement of the WIMP mass, without making any astrophysical assumptions. However, direct detection experiments are not sensitive to low-speed WIMPs and, therefore, any model-independent approach will lead to a bias in the cross section. This problem can be solved with the addition of measurements of the flux of neutrinos from the Sun. This is because the flux of neutrinos produced from the annihilation of WIMPs which have been gravitationally captured in the Sun is sensitive to low-speed WIMPs. Using mock data from next-generation direct detection experiments and from the IceCube neutrino telescope, we show that the complementary information from IceCube on low-speed WIMPs breaks the degeneracy between the cross section and the speed distribution. This allows unbiased determinations of the WIMP mass and spin-independent and spin-dependent cross sections to be made, and the speed distribution to be reconstructed. We use two parameterisations of the speed distribution: binned and polynomial. While the polynomial parameterisation can encompass a wider range of speed distributions, this leads to larger uncertainties in the particle physics parameters.