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Moline, A., Schewtschenko, J. A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., Boehm, C., & Baugh, C. M. (2016). Isotropic extragalactic flux from dark matter annihilations: lessons from interacting dark matter scenarios. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 069–23pp.
Abstract: The extragalactic gamma-ray and neutrino emission may have a contribution from dark matter (DM) annihilations. In the case of discrepancies between observations and standard predictions, one could infer the DM pair annihilation cross section into cosmic rays by studying the shape of the energy spectrum. So far all analyses of the extragalactic DM signal have assumed the standard cosmological model (ACDM) as the underlying theory. However, there are alternative DM scenarios where the number of low-mass objects is significantly suppressed. Therefore the characteristics of the gamma-ray and neutrino emission in these models may differ from ACDM as a result. Here we show that the extragalactic isotropic signal in these alternative models has a similar energy dependence to that in ACDM, but the overall normalisation is reduced. The similarities between the energy spectra combined with the flux suppression could lead one to misinterpret possible evidence for models beyond ACDM as being due to CDM particles annihilating with a much weaker cross section than expected.
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Di Bari, P., Ludl, P. O., & Palomares-Ruiz, S. (2016). Unifying leptogenesis, dark matter and high-energy neutrinos with right-handed neutrino mixing via Higgs portal. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 11(11), 044–41pp.
Abstract: We revisit a model in which neutrino masses and mixing are described by a two right-handed (RH) neutrino seesaw scenario, implying a strictly hierarchical light neutrino spectrum. A third decoupled RH neutrino, N-DM with mass M-DM, plays the role of cold dark matter (DM) and is produced by the mixing with a source RH neutrino, Ns with mass M-S, induced by Higgs portal interactions. The same interactions are also responsible for N-DM decays. We discuss in detail the constraints coming from DM abundance and stability conditions showing that in the hierarchical case, for M-DM >> M-S, there is an allowed window on M-DM values necessarily implying a contribution, from DM decays, to the high-energy neutrino flux recently detected by IceCube. We also show how the model can explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe via leptogenesis in the quasi-degenerate limit. In this case, the DM mass should be within the range 300 GeV less than or similar to M-S < M-DM < 10PeV. We discuss the specific properties of this high-energy neutrino flux and show the predicted event spectrum for two exemplary cases. Although DM decays, with a relatively hard spectrum, cannot account for all the IceCube high-energy data, we illustrate how this extra source of high-energy neutrinos could reasonably explain some potential features in the observed spectrum. In this way, this represents a unified scenario for leptogenesis and DM that could be tested during the next years with more high-energy neutrino events.
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Garani, R., & Palomares-Ruiz, S. (2017). Dark matter in the Sun: scattering off electrons vs nucleons. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 007–41pp.
Abstract: The annihilation of dark matter (DM) particles accumulated in the Sun could produce a flux of neutrinos, which is potentially detectable with neutrino detectors/telescopes and the DM elastic scattering cross section can be constrained. Although the process of DM capture in astrophysical objects like the Sun is commonly assumed to be due to interactions only with nucleons, there are scenarios in which tree-level DM couplings to quarks are absent, and even if loop-induced interactions with nucleons are allowed, scatterings off electrons could be the dominant capture mechanism. We consider this possibility and study in detail all the ingredients necessary to compute the neutrino production rates from DM annihilationsin the Sun (capture, annihilation and evaporation rates) for velocity-independent and isotropic, velocity-dependent and isotropic and momentum-dependent scattering cross sections for DM interactions with electrons and compare them with the results obtained for the case of interactions with nucleons. Moreover, we improve the usual calculations in a number of ways and provide analytical expressions in three appendices. Interestingly, we find that the evaporation mass in the case of interactions with electrons could be below the GeV range, depending on the high-velocity tail of the DM distribution in the Sun, which would open a new mass window for searching for this type of scenarios.
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Bhattacharya, A., Esmaili, A., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Sarcevic, I. (2017). Probing decaying heavy dark matter with the 4-year IceCube HESE data. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 027–36pp.
Abstract: After the first four years of data taking, the IceCube neutrino telescope has observed 54 high-energy starting events (HESE) with deposited energies between 20TeV and 2PeV. The background from atmospheric muons and neutrinos is expected to be of about 20 events, all below 100TeV, thus pointing towards the astrophysical origin of about 8 events per year in that data set. However, their precise origin remains unknown. Here, we perform a detailed analysis of this event sample (considering simultaneously the energy, hemisphere and topology of the events) by assuming two contributions for the signal events: an isotropic power-law flux and a flux from decaying heavy dark matter. We fit the mass and lifetime of the dark matter and the normalization and spectral index of an isotropic power-law flux, for various decay channels of dark matter. We find that a significant contribution from dark matter decay is always slightly favored, either to explain the excess below 100TeV, as in the case of decays to quarks or, as in the case of neutrino channels, to explain the three multi-PeV events. Also, we consider the possibility to interpret all the data by dark matter decays only, considering various combinations of two decay channels. We show that the decaying dark matter scenario provides a better fit to HESE data than the isotropic power-law flux.
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Escudero, M., Lopez-Honorez, L., Mena, O., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2018). A fresh look into the interacting dark matter scenario. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 06(6), 007–35pp.
Abstract: The elastic scattering between dark matter particles and radiation represents an attractive possibility to solve a number of discrepancies between observations and standard cold dark matter predictions, as the induced collisional damping would imply a suppression of small-scale structures. We consider this scenario and confront it with measurements of the ionization history of the Universe at several redshifts and with recent estimates of the counts of Milky Way satellite galaxies. We derive a conservative upper bound on the dark matter photon elastic scattering cross section of sigma gamma DM < 8 x 10(-10) sigma(T) (m(DM)/GeV) at 95% CL, about one order of magnitude tighter than previous constraints from satellite number counts. Due to the strong degeneracies with astrophysical parameters, the bound on the dark matter-photon scattering cross section derived here is driven by the estimate of the number of Milky Way satellite galaxies. Finally, we also argue that future 21 cm probes could help in disentangling among possible non-cold dark matter candidates, such as interacting and warm dark matter scenarios. Let us emphasize that bounds of similar magnitude to the ones obtained here could be also derived for models with dark matter-neutrino interactions and would be as constraining as the tightest limits on such scenarios.
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