#StudentSeminar: The Unseen Cosmos: Hunting WIMPs in the Abyss

by Adriana Bariego Quintana (KM3NeT IFIC)

Monday 7 Jul 2025, 11:00 → 12:30 Europe/Madrid

1001-Primera-1-1-1 - Paterna. Seminario (Universe)

We live in a Universe where more than 80% of the mass seems to be missing, we find substantial astrophysical evidence for the existence of a new component: Dark Matter (DM). All observations of this component are confined to gravitational interactions. Early proposals included celestial bodies and baryonic matter, while current research still considers possibilities like Primordial Black Holes. Among particle candidates, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) remain a leading proposal due to their theoretical appeal and detectable cross-sections.

When WIMP DM decays or annihilates, neutrinos are produced. Therefore, an indirect detection of DM involves searching for an excess of neutrinos in astrophysical targets such as the Galactic Centre or the Sun, where large amounts of DM are believed to accumulate. Such an excess of neutrinos could then be observed by large-scale Cherenkov detectors such as KM3NeT, which is currently under construction in the abyss of the Mediterranean Sea, while taking data in partial detector configurations. KM3NeT is composed of two undersea Cherenkov neutrino detectors: KM3NeT/ORCA, a dense-geometry detector optimized for the measurement of low energy (GeV) neutrinos, and KM3NeT/ARCA, a cubic kilometer-sized detector, intended for the detection of high energy astrophysical neutrinos.

In this seminar we will explore ORCA’s potential as KM3NeT’s smallest detector to search for WIMP signals across its various operational configurations. 

 

SeminarUV.pdf