Astrophysical limitations to the identification of dark matter: Indirect neutrino signals vis-a-vis direct detection recoil rates

Journal Article · Wed Sep 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.82.063505· OSTI ID:21421112

Serpico, Pasquale D; Bertone, Gianfranco ^[1]

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1. Physics Department, Theory Group, CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland and LAPTH, UMR 5108, 9 chemin de Bellevue - BP 110, 74941 Annecy-Le-Vieux (France)

A convincing identification of dark matter (DM) particles can probably be achieved only through a combined analysis of different detections strategies, which provides an effective way of removing degeneracies in the parameter space of DM models. In practice, however, this program is made complicated by the fact that different strategies depend on different physical quantities, or on the same quantities but in a different way, making the treatment of systematic errors rather tricky. We discuss here the uncertainties on the recoil rate in direct-detection experiments and on the muon rate induced by neutrinos from dark matter annihilations in the Sun, and we show that, contrarily to the local DM density or overall cross section scale, irreducible astrophysical uncertainties affect the two rates in a different fashion, therefore limiting our ability to reconstruct the parameters of the dark matter particles. By varying within their respective errors astrophysical parameters such as the escape velocity and the velocity dispersion of dark matter particles, we show that the uncertainty on the relative strength of the neutrino and direct-detection signal is as large as a factor of 2 for typical values of the parameters, but can be even larger in some circumstances.

• OSTI ID: 21421112
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 82, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.063505; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
ANNIHILATION
ASTROPHYSICS
CROSS SECTIONS
DENSITY
DISPERSIONS
MUONS
NEUTRINO DETECTION
NEUTRINOS
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
SPACE
SUN
VELOCITY
DETECTION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FERMIONS
INTERACTIONS
LEPTONS
MAIN SEQUENCE STARS
MASSLESS PARTICLES
MATTER
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
PHYSICS
RADIATION DETECTION
STARS