Gozzini, S. R. (Corresponding author) ; Lagunas, C. ; Sala, F.Extern* ; d. D. Zornoza Gómez, J. ; ANTARES Collaboration (Collaboration author)

2021
SISSA Trieste

202136th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2019, MadisonMadison, United States, 24 Jul 2019 - 1 Aug 20192019-07-242019-08-01 Proceedings of Science / International School for Advanced Studies (ICRC2019), 519 (2021) [10.22323/1.358.0519]2021

 

Abstract: Dark matter scenarios starring WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) at the GeV-TeV scale have been intensively investigated, among others by neutrino telescopes with indirect searches. So far no WIMP candidate particle has been observed. At the same time, collider experiments are pushing the scale of the needed new physics beyond the TeV range, and such heavy sectors have long been known to provide dark matter candidates in the same mass range. This situation strongly motivates the exploration of DM scenarios with masses at and above 10- 100 TeV. ‘Secluded’ frameworks then emerge as an ideal target for searches of the annihilation products of such heavy Dark Matter: they allow to naturally evade the unitarity bound on the dark matter mass, and at the same time to reliably compute the annihilation spectra of relevance for experiments. These perspectives open a new territory accessible to neutrino telescopes such as ANTARES and KM3NeT. Promising dark matter sources such as the Galactic Centre are in good visibility for these telescopes, that perform an unbinned-likelihood analysis in search for high-energy neutrinos produced in a dark matter pair-annihilation process. Current limits on WIMP pair annihilation cross section encourage the extension at higher energy, where the highest sensitivity is reached. The current status of secluded dark matter searches with ANTARES and the sensitivities achieved are presented.

Keyword(s): neutrino: detector ; neutrino: energy: high ; dark matter: mass ; dark matter: heavy ; cross section: annihilation ; energy: high ; WIMP ; sensitivity ; ANTARES ; new physics ; unitarity ; KM3NeT ; galaxy