Sterile neutrinos and indirect dark matter searches in IceCube
- Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Apartado 1761, Lima (Peru)
- Fermilab, Theoretical Physics Department, PO Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510 (United States)
If light sterile neutrinos exist and mix with the active neutrino flavors, this mixing will affect the propagation of high-energy neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in the Sun. In particular, new Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein resonances can occur, leading to almost complete conversion of some active neutrino flavors into sterile states. We demonstrate how this can weaken IceCube limits on neutrino capture and annihilation in the Sun and how potential future conflicts between IceCube constraints and direct detection or collider data might be resolved by invoking sterile neutrinos. We also point out that, if the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section and the allowed annihilation channels are precisely measured in direct detection and collider experiments in the future, IceCube can be used to constrain sterile neutrino models using neutrinos from the dark matter annihilation.
- OSTI ID:
- 22279841
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 07 Vol. 2012; ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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