Testing Dark Matter with Neutrino Detectors

por Sergio Palomares-Ruiz (CFTP Lisboa)

martes 7 abr. 2009 15:30 → 16:30 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios (Dpto. de Física Teórica (UVEG))

In this talk I will show how future neutrino detectors can also be used to constrain some of the Dark Matter properties. If the Dark Matter of the Universe is constituted by WIMPs, they would accumulate in the core of astrophysical objects as the Sun and annihilate into particles of the Standard Model. Neutrinos would be produced, both directly and via the subsequent decay of leptons, quarks and bosons. While Cherenkov neutrino detectors/telescopes can only count the number of neutrinos above some threshold energy, we show first that by exploiting their energy resolution, planned future detectors for long baseline experiments might have the capability of reconstructing the neutrino spectrum and we indicate what we can learn from this. On the other hand, we also discuss the possibility to use Dark Matter annihilations in the halo in order to constrain, in a model-independent way, the annihilation cross section. In order to do this, we use the fact that neutrinos are the least detectable particles in the Standard Model, so that a null signal in this channel allows us to set the most conservative upper bound on this cross section. Similarly, we also show how we can use neutrino detectors to set the most conservative and model-independent lower bound on the Dark Matter lifetime, in case it is not stable.