Eur. Phys. J. C (2016) 76: 531
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4375-3

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

All-flavour search for neutrinos from dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way with IceCube/DeepCore

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 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 and Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
¹¹ Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115, Bonn, Germany
¹² Science Faculty CP230, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹³ Dienst ELEM, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹⁴ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁷ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
¹⁸ Department of Physics, Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
¹⁹ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
²⁰ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
²¹ Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221, Dortmund, Germany
²² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA
²³ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E1, Canada
²⁴ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁵ Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland
²⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000, Gent, Belgium
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA
²⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
³⁰ Department of Physics, Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
³¹ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099, Mainz, Germany
³² Department of Physics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, 53201, USA
³³ Université de Mons, 7000, Mons, Belgium
³⁴ Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), National Research Nuclear University, Moscow, Russia
³⁵ Physik-department, Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
³⁶ Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 48149, Münster, Germany
³⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
³⁸ Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA
³⁹ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK
⁴⁰ Department of Physics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA
⁴¹ Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, 57701, USA
⁴² Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, 54022, USA
⁴³ Department of Physics, Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁴⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-3800, USA
⁴⁵ Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea
⁴⁶ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A7, Canada
⁴⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA
⁴⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁴⁹ Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁵⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA
⁵¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden
⁵² Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
⁵³ DESY, 15735, Zeuthen, Germany

^* e-mail: cph@physics.uu.se

Received: 2 June 2016
Accepted: 15 September 2016
Published online: 28 September 2016

Abstract

We present the first IceCube search for a signal of dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way using all-flavour neutrino-induced particle cascades. The analysis focuses on the DeepCore sub-detector of IceCube, and uses the surrounding IceCube strings as a veto region in order to select starting events in the DeepCore volume. We use 329 live-days of data from IceCube operating in its 86-string configuration during 2011–2012. No neutrino excess is found, the final result being compatible with the background-only hypothesis. From this null result, we derive upper limits on the velocity-averaged self-annihilation cross-section, , for dark matter candidate masses ranging from 30 GeV up to 10 TeV, assuming both a cuspy and a flat-cored dark matter halo profile. For dark matter masses between 200 GeV and 10 TeV, the results improve on all previous IceCube results on , reaching a level of 10 cm s, depending on the annihilation channel assumed, for a cusped NFW profile. The analysis demonstrates that all-flavour searches are competitive with muon channel searches despite the intrinsically worse angular resolution of cascades compared to muon tracks in IceCube.