Sensitivities of the IceCube DeepCore detector to signatures of low-mass dark matter in the Galactic halo

Abstract

We discuss the event rate in the DeepCore array due to neutrino flux produced by annihilations and decays of Galactic dark matter. This event rate is calculated with a 10 GeV threshold energy, which is smaller than the threshold energy taken in previous works. Taking into account the background event rate due to the atmospheric neutrino flux, we evaluate the sensitivity of the DeepCore array for probing the dark matter annihilation cross section and decay time. The sensitivity studies include the annihilation modes chi chi -> b (b) over bar, tau(+)tau(-), mu(+)mu(-), and nu(nu) over bar, and decay modes chi -> b (b) over bar, tau(+)tau(-), mu(+)mu(-), and nu(nu) over bar. We compare our results with corresponding constraints derived from observations of WMAP, ACT, and Fermi-LAT. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.87.025003