Paper

Indirect detection of unstable heavy dark matter

Gondolo, P

1992

Overview

Unstable relics with lifetime longer than the age of the Universe could be the dark matter today. Electrons, photons and neutrinos are a natural outcome of their decay and could be searched for in cosmic rays and in \\(\\gamma\\)-ray and neutrino detectors. I compare the sensitivities of these three types of searches to the mass and lifetime of a generic unstable particle. I show that if the relics constitute our galactic halo and their branching ratios into electron-positrons, photons and neutrinos are comparable, neutrino searches would probe the longest lifetimes for masses \\(\\simge 40 \\TeV\\), while electron-positron searches would be better but more uncertain for lighter particles. If instead the relics are not clustered in our halo, neutrinos are more sensitive a probe than \\(\\gamma\\)-rays for masses \\(\\simge 700 \\GeV\\). A \\( 1 \\sqkm \\) neutrino telescope should be able to explore lifetimes up to \\( \\sim 10^{30} \\sec \\) while searching for neutrinos from unstable particles above the atmospheric background.

• Publisher: Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
• Subject: Atoms & subatomic particles / Cosmic rays / Dark matter / Neutrinos / Particle physics / Photons / Positrons / Searching / Universe