Searching for heavy dark matter decay in neutrino telescopes

• Grant number: 11/20723-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: March 09, 2012
• End date: March 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Elementary Particle Physics and Fields
• Principal Investigator: Orlando Luis Goulart Peres
• Grantee: Orlando Luis Goulart Peres
• Visiting researcher: Alejandro Ibarra
• Visiting researcher institution: Technical University of Munich (TUM) , Germany
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin (IFGW). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: Campinas

Abstract

We plan to derive constraints on the lifetime of the dark matter particle from the measurements of the neutrino flux at IceCube, which is sensitive to neutrinos with energies between100 GeV and 1 EeV. This will allow us to derive constraints for dark matter particles in the mass window between 100 GeV and 109 GeV, far larger than the window which can be constrained from the flux measurements of cosmic antimatter or gamma-rays. To this end, we will set up a team of scientists from TUM and UNICAMP, thus merging the experience of the TUM group in indirect dark matter detection and of the UNICAMP group in neutrino physics and neutrino telescopes. (AU)