Speaker
Description
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the most compelling candidates for particle dark matter. These particles can be gravitationally captured by massive celestial bodies, such as the Sun, where they accumulate and, according to theoretical models, eventually self-annihilate into Standard Model particles, including neutrinos. Neutrino telescopes - large arrays of photo-sensors in a transparent medium - can search for this indirect signature of dark matter by detecting neutrinos originating from the Sun’s core.
In this study, data collected from 2007 to 2022 by ANTARES, a neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea, are analyzed to perform an indirect search for dark matter from the direction of the Sun. Neutrino event properties are reconstructed using standard algorithms developed within the Collaboration, alongside a novel Machine Learning tool designed to enhance reconstruction accuracy for neutrino energies below 200 GeV, applied for the first time in this type of analysis. Additionally, all-flavor neutrino interactions are considered. A likelihood-based unbinned analysis is conducted to determine the upper limits to the spin-dependent and spin-independent WIMP- nucleon scattering cross-sections for WIMP masses ranging from 35 GeV/c$^2$ to 10 TeV/c$^2$ and for three different annihilation channels.
| Collaboration(s) | ANTARES |
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