Search for dark matter towards the Galactic Centre with 11 years of ANTARES data

TL;DR

This study uses 11 years of ANTARES neutrino data to search for dark matter annihilation signals from the Galactic Centre, setting limits on WIMP properties in the absence of detection.

Contribution

First comprehensive analysis of 11 years of ANTARES data targeting dark matter signals from the Galactic Centre.

Findings

No dark matter signal detected.

Set new upper limits on WIMP annihilation cross section.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of directional neutrino searches.

Abstract

Neutrino detectors participate in the indirect search for the fundamental constituents of dark matter (DM) in form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). In WIMP scenarios, candidate DM particles can pair-annihilate into Standard Model products, yielding considerable fluxes of high-energy neutrinos. A detector like ANTARES, located in the Northern Hemisphere, is able to perform a competitive search looking towards the Galactic Centre, where a high density of dark matter is thought to accumulate. Both this directional information and the spectral features of annihilating DM pairs are entered into an unbinned likelihood method to scan the data set in search for DM-like signals in ANTARES data. Results obtained upon unblinding 11 years of data are presented. A non-observation of dark matter is converted into limits on the velocity-averaged cross section for WIMP pair annihilation.