Searching for Dark Matter Annihilation to Monoenergetic Neutrinos with Liquid Scintillation Detectors

TL;DR

This paper explores how liquid scintillation detectors can improve the search for dark matter annihilation into monoenergetic neutrinos from the Sun, especially for dark matter masses around 10 GeV.

Contribution

It demonstrates that existing and future liquid scintillation detectors can surpass current experiments in detecting low-mass dark matter via neutrino signals.

Findings

KamLAND can outperform current direct detection for dark matter masses below 15 GeV.

Future detectors with larger exposure will significantly enhance sensitivity.

Liquid scintillation detectors are promising tools for probing ~10 GeV dark matter.

Abstract

We consider searches for dark matter annihilation to monoenergetic neutrinos in the core of the Sun. We find that liquid scintillation neutrino detectors have enhanced sensitivity to this class of dark matter models, due to the energy and angular resolution possible for electron neutrinos and antineutrinos that scatter via charged-current interactions. In particular we find that KamLAND, utilizing existing data, could provide better sensitivity to such models than any current direct detection experiment for $m_X \lesssim 15$ GeV. KamLAND's sensitivity is signal-limited, and future liquid scintillation or liquid argon detectors with similar energy and angular resolution, but with larger exposure, will provide significantly better sensitivity. These detectors may be particularly powerful probes of dark matter with mass $\mathcal{O}(10)$ GeV.