Multipole analysis of IceCube data to search for dark matter accumulated in the Galactic haloShow others and affiliations
2015 (English)In: European Physical Journal C, ISSN 1434-6044, E-ISSN 1434-6052, Vol. 75, no 1, article id 20Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Dark matter which is bound in the Galactic halo might self-annihilate and produce a flux of stable final state particles, e. g. high energy neutrinos. These neutrinos can be detected with IceCube, a cubic-kilometer sized Cherenkov detector. Given IceCube's large field of view, a characteristic anisotropy of the additional neutrino flux is expected. In this paper we describe a multipole method to search for such a large-scale anisotropy in IceCube data. This method uses the expansion coefficients of a multipole expansion of neutrino arrival directions and incorporates signal-specific weights for each expansion coefficient. We apply the technique to a high-purity muon neutrino sample from the Northern Hemisphere. The final result is compatible with the null-hypothesis. As no signal was observed, we present limits on the self-annihilation cross-section averaged over the relative velocity distribution <sigma(A)v > down to 1.9x10(-23) cm(3) s(-1) for a dark matter particle mass of 700-1,000 GeV and direct annihilation into nu(nu) over bar. The resulting exclusion limits come close to exclusion limits from gamma-ray experiments, that focus on the outer Galactic halo, for high dark matter masses of a few TeV and hard annihilation channels.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. Vol. 75, no 1, article id 20
National Category
Other Physics Topics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-247431DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-014-3224-5ISI: 000348992100002OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-247431DiVA, id: diva2:797128
2015-03-232015-03-182017-12-04Bibliographically approved