Neutrinos from the Sun can discover dark matter-electron scattering
We probe dark matter-electron scattering using high-energy neutrino observations from the Sun. Dark matter (DM) interacting with electrons can get captured inside the Sun. These captured DM may annihilate to produce different Standard Model (SM) particles. Neutrinos produced from these SM states can be observed in IceCube and DeepCore. Although there is no excess of neutrinos in the solar direction, we find that the current datasets of IceCube and DeepCore set the strongest constraint on the DM-electron scattering cross section in the DM mass range 10–<a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:msup><a:mn>10</a:mn><a:mn>5</a:mn></a:msup><a:mtext> </a:mtext><a:mtext> </a:mtext><a:mi>GeV</a:mi></a:math>. Therefore our work implies that future observations of the Sun by neutrino telescopes have the potential to discover the DM-electron interaction.
Authors
- Ranjan Laha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7104-5730)
- Sagnik Mondal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4023-381X)
- Akash Kumar Saha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3033-2589)
- Karl J. Friston
Institutions
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Homi Bhabha National Institute (IN)
- Harish-Chandra Research Institute (IN)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics (AU)
- Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (IN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. D/Physical review. D.
- Published
- 2025-06-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/3f66-nfd5
- Citations
- 4
- Primary Topic
- Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 7.48
Funders
- Indian Institute of Science
- Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India
- Indian Space Research Organisation
- Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India
- Infosys Foundation
- Australian Research Council