A strong test of the dark matter origin of a TeV electron excess using icecube neutrinos

Yue Zhao, Ke Fang, Meng Su, M. Coleman Miller

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Articlepeer-review

Abstract

Due to the electroweak symmetry, high energy neutrinos and charged leptons are generically produced simultaneously in heavy dark matter decay or annihilation process. Correlating these two channels in dark matter indirect detections may provide important information on the intrinsic production mechanism. In this paper, we demonstrate this point by studying the tentative excess in the electron spectrum at 1.4 TeV reported by the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE). A non-astrophysical scenario in which dark matter particles annihilate or decay in a local clump has been invoked to explain the excess. If e± annihilation channels in the final states are mediated by left-handed leptons as a component in the SU(2)L doublet, neutrinos with similar energies should have been simultaneously produced. We demonstrate that generic dark matter models can be decisively tested by the existing IceCube data. In case of a non-detection, such models would be excluded at the 5σ level by the five-year data for a point-like source and by the ten-year data for an extended source of dark matter particles with left-handed leptons. This serves as an example of the importance of correlating charged lepton and neutrino channels. It would be fruitful to conduct similar studies related to other approaches to the indirect detection of dark matter.

Original languageEnglish
Article number030
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2018
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab.

Keywords

  • dark matter theory
  • ultra high energy photons and neutrinos

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