Sterile neutrinos and indirect dark matter searches in IceCube

Abstract

If light sterile neutrinos exist and mix with the active neutrino flavors,this mixing will affect the propagation of high-energy neutrinos from darkmatter annihilation in the Sun. In particular, new Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfensteinresonances can occur, leading to almost complete conversion of some activeneutrino flavors into sterile states. We demonstrate how this can weakenIceCube limits on neutrino capture and annihilation in the Sun and howpotential future conflicts between IceCube constraints and direct detectionor collider data might be resolved by invoking sterile neutrinos. We also pointout that, if the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section and theallowed annihilation channels are precisely measured in direct detectionand collider experiments in the future, IceCube can be used to constrainsterile neutrino models using neutrinos from the dark matter annihilation.