Search for dark matter annihilations in the center of the Earth with IceCube

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for neutrinos from dark matter annihilations in Earth's center using 10 years of IceCube data, setting new limits on WIMP properties for masses above 100 GeV.

Contribution

First comprehensive search for neutrinos from Earth-trapped dark matter annihilations using a decade of IceCube data, providing competitive constraints on WIMP models.

Findings

Set new limits on WIMP annihilation cross-sections for masses > 100 GeV.

Detected no significant excess neutrinos from Earth's center.

Compared results with previous experiments, establishing world-leading constraints.

Abstract

The nature of Dark Matter remains one of the most important unresolved questions of fundamental physics. Many models, including the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), assume Dark Matter to be a particle and predict a weak coupling with Standard Model matter. If Dark Matter particles can scatter off nuclei in the vicinity of a massive object, such as a star or a planet, they may lose kinetic energy and become gravitationally trapped in the center of such objects, including Earth. As Dark Matter accumulates in the center of the Earth, self-annihilation of WIMPs into Standard Model particles can result in an excess of neutrinos coming from the center of the Earth and detectable at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, situated at the geographic South Pole. A search for excess neutrinos from these annihilations has been performed on 10 years of IceCube data, and results have been interpreted in the context of a number of WIMP annihilation channels ($\chi\chi\rightarrow\tau^+\tau^-/W^+W^-/b\bar{b}$) and masses ranging from 10 GeV to 10 TeV. We present the results from this analysis and compare the outcome with previous searches by other experiments. This analysis yields competitive and world-leading results for masses $m_\chi$ > 100 GeV.