Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo A Search Using Neutrino Induced Cascades in the DeepCore Extension of IceCube

Sammanfattning: A search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) annihilating in the dark matter halo of the Milky Way was performed, using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and its low-energy extension DeepCore. The data were collected during one year between 2011 to 2012 corresponding to 329.1 days of detector livetime. If WIMPs in the dark matter halo undergo pairwise annihilation they may produce a neutrino signal detectable at the Earth. Assuming annihilation into bb, W+W-, τ+τ-, μ+μ-, νν and a neutrino flavor ratio of 1:1:1 at the detector, cascade events from all neutrino flavors were used to search for an excess of neutrinos matching a dark matter signal spectrum. Two dark matter density profiles for the halo were used; the cored Burkert profile and the cusped NFW profile. No excess of neutrinos from the Galactic halo was observed, and upper limits were set for the thermally averaged product of the WIMP self-annihilation cross section and velocity, <σAv>, in the WIMP mass range 30 GeV to 10 TeV. For the bb annihilation channel and the NFW halo profile, the 90% C.L. upper limits are 9.03×10-22 cm3 s-1 for the mass WIMP 100 GeV and 4.08×10-22 cm3 s-1 for the WIMP mass 3000 GeV. The corresponding upper limits for the μ+μ- annihilation channel are 4.40×10-23 cm3 s-1 and 3.20×10-23 cm3 s-1.