The direct detection of boosted dark matter at high energies and PeV events at IceCube
- Dept. of Physics, University of Arizona, 1118 E. Fourth Street, Tucson, AZ 85704 (United States)
- Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad-211019 (India)
We study the possibility of detecting dark matter directly via a small but energetic component that is allowed within present-day constraints. Drawing closely upon the fact that neutral current neutrino nucleon interactions are indistinguishable from DM-nucleon interactions at low energies, we extend this feature to high energies for a small, non-thermal but highly energetic population of DM particle χ, created via the decay of a significantly more massive and long-lived non-thermal relic ϕ, which forms the bulk of DM. If χ interacts with nucleons, its cross-section, like the neutrino-nucleus coherent cross-section, can rise sharply with energy leading to deep inelastic scattering, similar to neutral current neutrino-nucleon interactions at high energies. Thus, its direct detection may be possible via cascades in very large neutrino detectors. As a specific example, we apply this notion to the recently reported three ultra-high energy PeV cascade events clustered around 1−2 PeV at IceCube (IC). We discuss the features which may help discriminate this scenario from one in which only astrophysical neutrinos constitute the event sample in detectors like IC.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- SCOAP3, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
- OSTI ID:
- 22454526
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 03; Other Information: PUBLISHER-ID: JCAP03(2015)027; OAI: oai:repo.scoap3.org:9573; Article funded by SCOAP3. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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