Dark Matter Hot Spots and Neutrino Telescopes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel dark matter hot spot analysis using IceCube data, leveraging spatial information to improve detection limits for dark matter annihilation neutrinos in the 10 TeV to 100 PeV range.

Contribution

It presents a new method that treats dark matter annihilation sites as point sources, enhancing sensitivity over traditional galactic center analyses.

Findings

Set the highest neutrino detector limits for dark matter masses 10 TeV to 100 PeV.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of spatial information in neutrino detection.

Identified potential hot spots as signals of dark matter annihilation.

Abstract

We perform a new dark matter hot spot analysis using ten years of public IceCube data. This analysis assumes dark matter self-annihilates to neutrino pairs and treats the production sites as discrete point sources. As a result, these sites will appear as hot spots in the sky for neutrino telescopes, possibly outshining other standard model neutrino sources. Compared to galactic center analyses, we show that this approach is a powerful tool capable of setting the highest neutrino detector limits for dark matter masses between 10 TeV and 100 PeV. This is due to the inclusion of spatial information in addition to the typically used energy deposition in the analysis.