Towards detecting super-GeV dark matter via annihilation to neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of upcoming large-scale neutrino telescopes like KM3NeT to detect dark matter annihilation signals from the Galactic Centre across a wide mass range, using sensitivity projections and likelihood analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed sensitivity projections for neutrino telescopes detecting dark matter annihilation signals from the Galactic Centre, covering masses from GeV to 100 TeV.

Findings

Neutrino telescopes can reach the thermal relic cross-section for dark matter masses above 1 TeV.

Detectors like ORCA and ARCA can perform competitive dark matter searches across a broad mass spectrum.

Projections indicate the potential to probe new parameter space in dark matter particle models.

Abstract

The next generation of neutrino telescopes will feature unprecedented sensitivities in the detection of neutrinos. Here we study the capabilities of a large-scale neutrino telescope, like the fully-operating KM3NeT experiment in the near future, for detecting dark matter annihilation signals from the Galactic Centre. We consider both ORCA and ARCA detectors, covering dark matter masses from a few GeV to 100 TeV. We obtain the sensitivities with a maximum-likelihood analysis method and present them as upper limits in the thermally averaged annihilation cross-section into Standard Model fermions. Our projections show that the sensitivity of such a neutrino telescope can reach the thermal relic line for $m_{\chi}\gtrsim 1\,{\rm TeV}$ and for $m_\chi \simeq$ few GeV, for the NFW dark matter density profile. This demonstrates that ORCA- and ARCA-like detectors will be able to perform competitive dark matter searches in a wide range of masses. The implications of these striking projections are investigated in a few selected dark matter particle models, where we show that neutrino telescopes are able to probe new parameter space.