Probing the Dark Matter Capture Rate in a Local Population of Brown Dwarfs with IceCube Gen 2

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detecting dark matter annihilation in nearby brown dwarfs via neutrinos using IceCube Gen 2, providing new constraints on dark matter-nucleon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to probe dark matter in brown dwarfs through neutrino signals and assesses IceCube Gen 2's sensitivity to these events.

Findings

IceCube Gen 2 can exclude dark matter-nucleon cross-sections down to a few times 10^{-36} cm^2.

Brown dwarfs within 20 parsecs are promising targets for dark matter detection.

Neutrino signals from dark matter annihilation in brown dwarfs are detectable with future neutrino telescopes.

Abstract

This study explores the potential for dark matter annihilation within brown dwarfs, investigating an unconventional mechanism for neutrino production. Motivated by the efficient accumulation of dark matter particles in brown dwarfs through scattering interactions, we focus on a mass range above 10 GeV, considering dark matter annihilation channels $\chi \chi \rightarrow \nu \bar{\nu} \nu \bar{\nu}$ through long-lived mediators. Using the projected sensitivity of IceCube Generation 2, we assess the detection capability of the local population of brown dwarfs within 20 pc and exclude dark matter-nucleon scattering with cross-sections as low as a few multiples of $10^{-36}~\rm cm^{2}$.