Abstract
With positive signals from multiple direct detection experiments it will, in principle, be possible to measure the mass and cross sections of weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter. Recent work has shown that, with a polynomial parameterisation of the WIMP speed distribution, it is possible to make an unbiased measurement of the WIMP mass, without making any astrophysical assumptions. However, direct detection experiments are not sensitive to low-speed WIMPs and, therefore, any model-independent approach will lead to a bias in the cross section. This problem can be solved with the addition of measurements of the flux of neutrinos from the Sun. This is because the flux of neutrinos produced from the annihilation of WIMPs which have been gravitationally captured in the Sun is sensitive to low-speed WIMPs. Using mock data from next-generation direct detection experiments and from the IceCube neutrino telescope, we show that the complementary information from IceCube on low-speed WIMPs breaks the degeneracy between the cross section and the speed distribution. This allows unbiased determinations of the WIMP mass and spin-independent and spin-dependent cross sections to be made, and the speed distribution to be reconstructed. We use two parameterisations of the speed distribution: binned and polynomial. While the polynomial parameterisation can encompass a wider range of speed distributions, this leads to larger uncertainties in the particle physics parameters.
Highlights
Experiments aiming at detecting dark matter (DM) directly rely on measuring the signatures left by DM particles when they interact with the nuclei of a detector [1,2]
Using mock data from next-generation direct detection experiments and from the IceCube neutrino telescope, we show that the complementary information from IceCube on low-speed weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) breaks the degeneracy between the cross section and the speed distribution
We choose a set of well-motivated benchmarks for the mass and cross sections of the WIMP, as well as for its speed distribution. For each of these benchmarks we simulate the data expected in next-generation direct detection experiments and in a neutrino telescope. These data are encoded in a likelihood function, with which we scan over a parameter space that includes both particle physics quantities and astrophysical ones
Summary
Experiments aiming at detecting dark matter (DM) directly rely on measuring the signatures left by DM particles when they interact with the nuclei of a detector [1,2]. For each of these benchmarks we simulate the data expected in next-generation direct detection experiments and in a neutrino telescope These data are encoded in a likelihood function, with which we scan over a parameter space that includes both particle physics quantities (e.g. the WIMP mass and scattering cross sections) and astrophysical ones (e.g. the coefficients entering in our parametrization of the speed distribution). This technique allows us to estimate the precision with which future experiments will be able to reconstruct these parameters.
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