Neutrino topology reconstruction at DUNE and applications to searches for dark matter annihilation in the Sun

Abstract

We consider a new technique for neutrino energy and topology reconstruction at DUNE. In particular, we show that when the direction of the incoming neutrino is known, one can use the measured directions of the outgoing leptonic and hadronic particles to reconstruct poorly-measured quantities, such as the hadronic cascade energy. We show that this alternative technique yields an energy resolution which is comparable to current reconstruction methods which sum measured energies. As a proof of concept we apply this new reconstruction method to a search for dark matter annihilation in the Sun. We show that the use of directional information from both the leptonic and hadronic interaction products allows one to effectively reject backgrounds and isolate the signal, giving competitive sensitivities.