A search for solar dark matter with the IceCube neutrion telescope

by Gustav Wikström (SU Fysikum)

Friday 29 May 2009, 13:00 → 17:00 Europe/Stockholm

FB52

Dark matter particles in the form of supersymmetric Weakly Interaction Massive Particles (WIMPs) could accumulate in the centre of the Sun because of gravitational trapping. Pair-wise annihilations of WIMPs could create standard model particles ut of which neutrinos could reach the Earth. Data from the IceCube 22-string neutrino telescope have been searched for signals from dark matter annihilations in the Sun. Highly sophisticated analysis methods have been developed to discern signal neutrinos from the severe background of atmospheric particle showers. No signal has been found in a dataset of 104 days livetime taken in 2007, and an upper limit has been placed on the muon flux in the South Pole ice induced by neutrinos from the Sun, reaching down to 330 km–²y–¹. The flux has been converted into an upper limit on the neutralino scattering cross-section, which reaches down to 2.8*10 -40 cm² for spin-dependent interactions.