Neutrino constraints on long-lived heavy dark sector particle decays in the Earth

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrino observations from IceCube can constrain models of long-lived, super heavy dark matter particles decaying into neutrinos within the Earth, providing bounds on decay rates and densities.

Contribution

It introduces a method to constrain long-lived heavy dark matter decay in the Earth using neutrino data from IceCube, considering different decay channels and density distributions.

Findings

IceCube can set upper limits on dark matter decay rates in the Earth.

Constraints depend on the assumed dark matter density distribution.

Results provide bounds on decay widths for various dark matter masses.

Abstract

Recent theoretical work has explored dark matter accumulation in the Earth and its drift towards the center of the Earth that, for the current age of the Earth, does not necessarily result in a concentration of dark matter ($\chi$) in the Earth's core. We consider a scenario of long-lived ($\tau_\chi\sim 10^{28}$ s), super heavy ($m_\chi=10^7-10^{10}$ GeV) dark matter that decays via $\chi\to \nu_\tau \bar{\nu}_\tau$ or $\chi\to \nu_\mu \bar{\nu}_\mu$. We show that an IceCube-like detector over 10 years can constrain a dark matter density that mirrors the Earth's density or has a uniform density with density fraction $\epsilon_\rho$ combined with the partial decay width $B_{\chi\to \nu_\tau \bar{\nu}_\tau}\Gamma_\chi$ in the range of $(\epsilon_\rho/10^{-10}) B_{\chi\to \nu_\tau}\Gamma_\chi \lesssim 1.5\times 10^{-29}-1.5\times 10^{-28}$ s$^{-1}$. For $\chi\to \nu_\mu \bar{\nu}_\mu$, $m_\chi = 10^8-10^{10}$ GeV and $E_\mu>10^7$ GeV, the range of constraints is $(\epsilon_\rho/10^{-10}) B_{\chi\to \nu_\mu}\Gamma_\chi \lesssim 3\times 10^{-29}-7\times 10^{-28}$ s$^{-1}$.