Author:
Skrzypek B.,Chianese M.,Argüelles C.A.
Abstract
Abstract
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has measured astrophysical neutrinos
using through-going and starting events in the TeV to PeV energy range. The origin of these
astrophysical neutrinos is still largely unresolved, and among their potential sources could be
dark matter decay. Measurements of the astrophysical flux using muon neutrinos are in slight
tension with starting event measurements. This tension is driven by an excess observed in the
energy range of 40–200 TeV with respect to the through-going expectation. Previous works have
considered the possibility that this excess may be due to heavy dark matter decay and have placed
constraints using gamma-ray and neutrino data. However, these constraints are not without
caveats, since they rely on the modeling of the astrophysical neutrino flux and the sources of
gamma-ray emission. In this work, we derive background-agnostic galactic and extragalactic
constraints on decaying dark matter by considering Tibet-ASγ data, Fermi-LAT diffuse data,
and the IceCube high-energy starting event sample. For the gamma-ray limits, we investigate the
uncertainties on secondary emission from electromagnetic cascades during propagation arising from
the unknown intensity of the extragalactic background light. We find that such uncertainties
amount to a variation of up to ∼ 55% in the gamma-ray limits derived with extragalactic
data. Our results imply that a significant fraction of the astrophysical neutrino flux could be
due to dark matter and that ruling it out depends on the assumptions on the gamma-ray and neutrino
background. The latter depends on the yet unidentified sources.
Subject
Astronomy and Astrophysics
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