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This study investigates how IceCube, a neutrino detector in Antarctica, can detect dark matter particles that have been accelerated by blazars (extremely energetic galactic centers). Researchers analyzed data from 324 blazars and calculated how dark matter particles boosted by these sources would interact with matter as they pass through Earth, considering elastic collisions, resonant pion production, and deep inelastic scattering. The analysis demonstrates that IceCube can potentially detect dark matter particles with masses below approximately 1 GeV more effectively than conventional ground-based direct detection experiments.
Why it matters
This research opens a new detection avenue for lightweight dark matter particles, which constitute most of the universe's mass but remain undetected. The blazar-boosted dark matter approach could help scientists probe a mass range that traditional direct detection experiments struggle to access, potentially leading to the first definitive dark matter detection.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
Abstract: We study the sensitivity of IceCube to blazar-boosted dark matter in a fermionic dark matter model with a massive vector mediator coupling to quarks. To this aim, we compute the diffuse flux arising from a sample of 324 blazars with proton spectra inferred from multiwavelength observations, adopting conservative dark matter spike profiles around the central supermassive black holes and consistently accounting for attenuation effects during propagation through the Earth. The dark matter-nucleon scattering cross section is evaluated by including elastic, resonant single pion production, and deep inelastic contributions, with particular emphasis on resonant single-pion production channels in order to smoothly cover the transition between the elastic and deep inelastic regimes. Using IceCube neutrino data, we derive constraints on the parameter space of the model and show that this detection strategy can surpass the sensitivity of conventional direct-detection experiments for dark matter masses below $sim 1$ GeV. We find that the signal is dominated by deep inelastic scattering and is therefore more sensitive to comparatively heavy mediators, while resonance processes provide a reduction of the event rate, reaching up to about $9%$ near the experimental threshold. Our results demonstrate that IceCube constitutes a powerful probe of sub-GeV dark matter scenarios through the observation of blazar-boosted dark matter.