The next generation of dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments and neutrino telescopes will probe large swaths of dark matter parameter space. In order to interpret the signals in these experiments, it is necessary to have good models of both the halo DM streaming through the solar system and the population of DM bound to the solar system. In this paper, the first in a series of three on DM in the solar system, we present simulations of orbits of DM bound to the solar system by solar capture in a toy solar system consisting of only the Sun and Jupiter, assuming that DM consists of a single species of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP). We describe how the size of the bound WIMP population depends on the WIMP mass, spin-independent cross section, and spin-dependent cross section. Using a standard description of the Galactic DM halo, we find that the maximum enhancement to the direct detection event rate, consistent with current experimental constraints on the WIMP-nucleon cross section, is < 1% relative to the event rate from halo WIMPs, while the event rate from neutrinos from WIMP annihilation in the center of the Earth is unlikely to meet the threshold of next-generation, km^3-sized (IceCube, KM3NeT) neutrino telescopes.
In this last paper in a series of three on weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter in the solar system, we focus on WIMPs bound to the system by gravitationally scattering off of planets. We present simulations of WIMP orbits in a toy solar system consisting of only the Sun and Jupiter. As previous work suggested, we find that the density of gravitationally captured WIMPs at the Earth is small and largely insensitive to the details of elastic scattering in the Sun. However, we find that the density of gravitationally captured WIMPs may be affected by external Galactic gravitatio…
We calculate the annihilation rate of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in the Sun as a function of their mass and elastic scattering cross section. One byproduct of the annihilation, muon neutrinos, may be observed by the next generation of neutrino telescopes. Previous estimates of the annihilation rate assumed that any WIMPs from the Galactic dark halo that are captured in the Sun by elastic scattering off solar nuclei quickly reach thermal equilibrium in the Sun. We show that the optical depth of the Sun to WIMPs and the gravitational forces from planets both serve to decrease t…
I study the possibility of probing Ultra-High Energy (UHE from now on) dark matter particles (>10$^8$ GeV) due to the decay of superheavy dark matter via detection of UHE neutrino signatures from the earth core. The UHE WIMP event rates are estimated at the energies of 100 PeV, and 1 EeV, 10 EeV, 100 EeV and 1 ZeV in JEM-EUSO and at the energy of 1 ZeV in IceCube, respectively. The diffuse neutrino contaminations are also roughly estimated in JEM-EUSO and IceCube. I found that the extreme energy WIMPs can be detected by JEM-EUSO above 1 EeV and by IceCube above 1 ZeV in the $χ$ mass range of 1…
Dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) can be captured by the Sun and the Earth, sink to their cores, annihilate and produce neutrinos that can be searched for with neutrino telescopes. The calculation of the capture rates of WIMPs in the Sun and especially the Earth are affected by large uncertainties coming mainly from effects of the planets in the Solar System, reducing the capture rates by up to an order of magnitude (or even more in some cases). We show that the WIMPs captured by weak scatterings in the Sun also constitute an important bound WIMP populatio…
In this article, we study in a little more detail the angular kinetic-energy distribution of halo Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and consider two simple modifications with the Solar Galactic orbital velocity in our Monte Carlo simulations of the 3-dimensional WIMP velocity as the first trial of future investigations on distinguishing models of the Galactic structure of Dark Matter particles by using directional direct detection data.
The absence of a neutrino flux from self-annihilating dark matter captured in the Sun has tightly constrained some leading particle dark matter scenarios. The impact of astrophysical uncertainties on the capture process of dark matter in the Sun and hence also the derived constraints by neutrino telescopes need to be taken into account. In this review we have explored relevant uncertainties in solar WIMP searches, summarized results from leading experiments, and provided an outlook into upcoming searches and future experiments. We have created an interactive plotting tool that allows the user …
Dark matter particles captured by the Sun through scattering may annihilate and produce neutrinos, which escape. Current searches are for the few high-energy neutrinos produced in the prompt decays of some final states. We show that interactions in the solar medium lead to a large number of pions for nearly all final states. Positive pions and muons decay at rest, producing low-energy neutrinos with known spectra, including nuebar through neutrino mixing. We demonstrate that Super-Kamiokande can thereby provide a new probe of the spin-dependent WIMP-proton cross section. Compared to other meth…
As disc galaxies form in a hierarchical cosmology, massive merging satellites are preferentially dragged towards the disc plane. The material accreted from these satellites forms a dark matter disc that contributes 0.25 - 1.5 times the non-rotating halo density at the solar position. Here, we show the importance of the dark disc for indirect dark matter detection in neutrino telescopes. Previous predictions of the neutrino flux from WIMP annihilation in the Earth and the Sun have assumed that Galactic dark matter is spherically distributed with a Gaussian velocity distribution, the standard ha…
Cosmic rays interacting in the solar atmosphere produce showers that result in a flux of high-energy neutrinos from the Sun. These form an irreducible background to indirect solar WIMP co-annihilation searches, which look for heavy dark matter particles annihilating into final states containing neutrinos in the Solar core. This background will eventually create a sensitivity floor for indirect WIMP co-annihilation searches analogous to that imposed by low-energy solar neutrino interactions for direct dark matter detection experiments. We present a new calculation of the flux of solar atmospher…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can be gravitationally captured by the Sun and trapped in its core. The annihilation of those WIMPs into Standard Model particles produces a spectrum of neutrinos whose energy distribution is related to the dark matter mass. In this work, we present the theoretical framework for relating an observed neutrino flux to the WIMP-nucleon cross section and summarize a previous solar WIMP search carried out by IceCube. We then outline an ongoing updated solar WIMP search, focusing on improvements over the previous search.
Galactic weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may scatter off solar nuclei to orbits gravitationally bound to the Sun. Once bound, the WIMPs continue to lose energy by repeated scatters in the Sun, eventually leading to complete entrapment in the solar interior. While the density of the bound population is highest at the center of the Sun, the only observable signature of WIMP annihilations inside the Sun is neutrinos. It has been previously suggested that although the density of WIMPs just outside the Sun is lower than deep inside, gamma rays from WIMP annihilation just outside the su…
We consider the recent limits on dark matter - nucleon elastic scattering cross section from the analysis of CDMS II collaboration using the two signal events observed in CDMS experiment. With these limits we try to interpret the Super-Kamiokande (SK) bounds on the detection rates of up-going muons induced by the neutrinos that are produced in the sun from the decay of annihilation products of dark matter (WIMPs) captured in the solar core. Calculated rates of up-going muons for different annihilation channels at SK using CDMS bounds are found to be orders below the predicted upper limits of s…
We compute in detail the rate at which energy injected by dark matter annihilation heats and ionizes the photon-baryon plasma at z ~ 1000, and provide accurate fitting functions over the relevant redshift range for a broad array of annihilation channels and DM masses. The resulting perturbations to the ionization history can be constrained by measurements of the CMB temperature and polarization angular power spectra. We show that models which fit recently measured excesses in 10-1000 GeV electron and positron cosmic rays are already close to the 95% confidence limits from WMAP. The recently la…
The nature of Dark Matter (DM) remains one of the most important unresolved questions of fundamental physics. Many models, including Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), assume DM to be a particle and predict a weak coupling with Standard Model matter. If DM particles can scatter off nuclei in the vicinity of a massive object such as a star or a planet, they may lose kinetic energy and become gravitationally trapped in the center of such objects, including Earth. As DM accumulates in the center of the Earth, self-annihilation of WIMPs into Standard Model particles can result in an exc…
As is well known, dark matter direct detection experiments will ultimately be limited by a "neutrino floor," due to the scattering of nuclei by MeV neutrinos from, e.g., nuclear fusion in the Sun. Here we point out the existence of a new "neutrino floor" that will similarly limit indirect detection with the Sun, due to high-energy neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions with the solar atmosphere. We have two key findings. First, solar atmospheric neutrinos $\lesssim 1$ TeV cause a sensitivity floor for standard WIMP scenarios, for which higher-energy neutrinos are absorbed in the Sun. This floo…
We investigate the prospects for indirect detection of fermion WIMPless dark matter at the neutrino telescopes IceCube and DeepCore. The dark matter annihilating in the Sun is a hidden sector Majorana fermion that couples through Yukawa couplings to a connector particle and a visible sector particle, and it exhibits only spin-dependent scattering with nuclei via couplings to first generation quarks. We consider cases where the annihilation products are taus, staus, or sneutrinos of the three generations. To evaluate the muon fluxes incident at the detector, we propagate the neutrino spectra th…
In this paper we study the effect of the channeling of ions recoiling from collisions with weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in single crystal detectors. In particular we investigate the possibility that channeling may give rise to diurnal modulations of the counting rate as the Earth rotates relative to the direction of the WIMP wind, and the effect that channeling has on the "quenching factor" of a detector.
Indirect searches for signatures of corpuscular dark matter have been performed using all cosmic messengers: gamma rays, cosmic rays, and neutrinos. The search for dark matter from neutrinos is of particular importance since they are the only courier that can reach detectors from dark matter processes in dense environments, such as the core of the Sun or Earth, or from the edge of the observable Universe. In this work, we introduce $χ$aro$ν$, a software package that, in the spirit of its mythological Greek namesake $χ\acuteαρων$, bridges the dark sector and Standard Model by predicting neutrin…
In this paper, we extended our earlier work on the reconstruction of the (time-averaged) one-dimensional velocity distribution of Galactic Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and introduce the Bayesian fitting procedure to the theoretically predicted velocity distribution functions. In this reconstruction process, the (rough) velocity distribution reconstructed by using raw data from direct Dark Matter detection experiments directly, i.e. measured recoil energies, with one or more different target materials, has been used as "reconstructed-input" information. By assuming a fitting vel…
We consider the effects of Galactic substructure on energetic neutrinos from annihilation of weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that have been captured by the Sun and Earth. Substructure gives rise to a time-varying capture rate and thus to time variation in the annihilation rate and resulting energetic-neutrino flux. However, there may be a time lag between the capture and annihilation rates. The energetic-neutrino flux may then be determined by the density of dark matter in the Solar System's past trajectory, rather than the local density. The signature of such an effect may be sou…
Self-annihilating dark matter gravitationally captured by the Sun could yield observable neutrino signals at current and next generation neutrino detectors. By exploiting such signals, neutrino detectors can probe the spin-dependent scattering of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with nucleons in the Sun. We describe a method how to convert constraints on neutrino fluxes to a limit on the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section. In this method all neutrino flavors can be treated in a very similar way. We study the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes for Solar WIMP signals using vertex …
Solar flare accelerated electron beams propagating away from the Sun can interact with the turbulent interplanetary media, producing plasma waves and type III radio emission. These electron beams are detected near the Earth with a double power-law energy spectrum. We simulate electron beam propagation from the Sun to the Earth in the weak turbulent regime taking into account the self-consistent generation of plasma waves and subsequent wave interaction with density fluctuations from low frequency MHD turbulence. The rate at which plasma waves are induced by an unstable electron beam is reduced…
