Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 492
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3713-1

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Search for dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center with IceCube-79

IceCube Collaboration

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² School of Chemistry and Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage, AK, 99508, USA
⁴ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, 30314, USA
⁵ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA
⁶ Department of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70813, USA
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
⁸ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
⁹ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489, Berlin, Germany
¹⁰ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
¹¹ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115, Bonn, Germany
¹² Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹³ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹⁴ Department of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁶ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
¹⁷ Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
¹⁸ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
¹⁹ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
²⁰ Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221, Dortmund, Germany
²¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA
²² Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E1, Canada
²³ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁴ Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland
²⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000, Ghent, Belgium
²⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA
²⁸ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
²⁹ Department of Physics, Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
³⁰ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099, Mainz, Germany
³¹ Université de Mons, 7000, Mons, Belgium
³² Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
³³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
³⁴ Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA
³⁵ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK
³⁶ Department. of Physics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA
³⁷ Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, 57701, USA
³⁸ Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, 54022, USA
³⁹ Department of Physics, Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁴⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-3800, USA
⁴¹ Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea
⁴² Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A7, Canada
⁴³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA
⁴⁴ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁴⁵ Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁴⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden
⁴⁷ Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
⁴⁸ DESY, 15735, Zeuthen, Germany

^* e-mail: samuel.flis@fysik.su.se

Received: 8 June 2015
Accepted: 25 September 2015
Published online: 15 October 2015

Abstract

The Milky Way is expected to be embedded in a halo of dark matter particles, with the highest density in the central region, and decreasing density with the halo-centric radius. Dark matter might be indirectly detectable at Earth through a flux of stable particles generated in dark matter annihilations and peaked in the direction of the Galactic Center. We present a search for an excess flux of muon (anti-) neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center using the cubic-kilometer-sized IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole. There, the Galactic Center is always seen above the horizon. Thus, new and dedicated veto techniques against atmospheric muons are required to make the southern hemisphere accessible for IceCube. We used 319.7 live-days of data from IceCube operating in its 79-string configuration during 2010 and 2011. No neutrino excess was found and the final result is compatible with the background. We present upper limits on the self-annihilation cross-section, , for WIMP masses ranging from 30 GeV up to 10 TeV, assuming cuspy (NFW) and flat-cored (Burkert) dark matter halo profiles, reaching down to  cm s, and  cm s for the channel, respectively.