New Limits on Thermally annihilating Dark Matter from Neutrino Telescopes

Understand

We used a consistent and robust solar model to obtain upper limits placed by neutrino telescopes, such as Ice- Cube and Super-Kamiokande, on the Dark Matter-nucleon scattering cross-section, for a general model of Dark Matter with a velocity dependent (p-wave) thermally averaged cross-section.

• In this picture, the Boltzmann equation for the Dark Matter abundance is numerically solved satisfying the Dark Matter density measured from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
• We show that for lower cross-sections and higher masses, the Dark Matter annihilation rate drops sharply, resulting in upper bounds on the scattering cross-section one order of magnitude above those derived from a velocity independent (s-wave) annihilation cross-section.
• Our results show that upper limits on the scattering cross-section obtained from Dark Matter annihilating in the Sun are sensible to the uncertainty in current standard solar models, fluctuating a maximum of 20 % depending on the annihilation channel.