Eur. Phys. J. C (2025) 85: 490
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14144-7

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Search for dark matter from the center of the Earth with 10 years of IceCube data

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, 5005, Adelaide, Australia
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., 99508, Anchorage, AK, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19059, 502 Yates St., Science Hall Rm 108, 76019, Arlington, TX, USA
⁵ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, 30332, Atlanta, GA, USA
⁶ Department of Physics, Southern University, 70813, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA
⁸ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 94720, Berkeley, CA, 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 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹² Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Dienst ELEM, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹³ Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, V5A 1S6, Burnaby, BC, Canada
¹⁴ Department of Physics and Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, Harvard University, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹⁶ Department of Physics and The International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University, 263-8522, Chiba, Japan
¹⁷ Department of Physics, Loyola University Chicago, 60660, Chicago, IL, USA
¹⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁹ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, 20742, College Park, MD, USA
²⁰ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA
²¹ Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA
²² Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
²³ Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221, Dortmund, Germany
²⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, 48824, East Lansing, MI, USA
²⁵ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, T6G 2E1, Edmonton, AB, Canada
²⁶ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁷ Physik-department, Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
²⁸ Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, 1211, Geneve, Switzerland
²⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000, Gent, Belgium
³⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, 92697, Irvine, CA, USA
³¹ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Astroparticle Physics, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany
³² Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Experimental Particle Physics, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany
³³ Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, K7L 3N6, Kingston, ON, Canada
³⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, 89154, Las Vegas, NV, USA
³⁵ Nevada Center for Astrophysics, University of Nevada, 89154, Las Vegas, NV, USA
³⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, 66045, Lawrence, KS, USA
³⁷ Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology-CP3, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
³⁸ Department of Physics, Mercer University, 31207-0001, Macon, GA, USA
³⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, Madison, WI, USA
⁴⁰ Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, Madison, WI, USA
⁴¹ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099, Mainz, Germany
⁴² Department of Physics, Marquette University, 53201, Milwaukee, WI, USA
⁴³ Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 48149, Münster, Germany
⁴⁴ Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, 19716, Newark, DE, USA
⁴⁵ Department of Physics, Yale University, 06520, New Haven, CT, USA
⁴⁶ Columbia Astrophysics and Nevis Laboratories, Columbia University, 10027, New York, NY, USA
⁴⁷ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, OX1 3PU, Oxford, UK
⁴⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia Galileo Galilei, Università Degli Studi di Padova, 35122, Padua, PD, Italy
⁴⁹ Department of Physics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA
⁵⁰ Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, 57701, Rapid City, SD, USA
⁵¹ Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, 54022, River Falls, WI, USA
⁵² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, 14627, Rochester, NY, USA
⁵³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
⁵⁴ Department of Physics, Chung-Ang University, 06974, Seoul, Republic of Korea
⁵⁵ Oskar Klein Centre and Department of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁵⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, 11794-3800, Stony Brook, NY, USA
⁵⁷ Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, 16419, Suwon, Republic of Korea
⁵⁸ Institute of Basic Science, Sungkyunkwan University, 16419, Suwon, Republic of Korea
⁵⁹ Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, 11529, Taipei, Taiwan
⁶⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, 35487, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
⁶¹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, 16802, University Park, PA, USA
⁶² Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, 16802, University Park, PA, USA
⁶³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden
⁶⁴ Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
⁶⁵ Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738, Zeuthen, Germany
⁶⁶ Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School Post, 751005, Bhubaneswar, India
⁶⁷ Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96, Gothenburg, Sweden
⁶⁸ Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, 113-0032, Tokyo, Japan
⁶⁹ Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

^a analysis@icecube.wisc.edu

Received: 17 December 2024
Accepted: 28 March 2025
Published online: 5 May 2025

Abstract

The nature of dark matter remains unresolved in fundamental physics. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which could explain the nature of dark matter, can be captured by celestial bodies like the Sun or Earth, leading to enhanced self-annihilation into Standard Model particles including neutrinos detectable by neutrino telescopes such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This article presents a search for muon neutrinos from the center of the Earth performed with 10 years of IceCube data using a track-like event selection. We considered a number of WIMP annihilation channels ($\chi \chi \to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$/$W^{+}{W}^{-}$/$b\overline{b}$) and masses ranging from 10 GeV to 10 TeV. No significant excess over background due to a dark matter signal was found while the most significant result corresponds to the annihilation channel $\chi \chi \to b\overline{b}$ for the mass $m_{\chi }=250$ GeV with a post-trial significance of $1.06\sigma$. Our results are competitive with previous such searches and direct detection experiments. Our upper limits on the spin-independent WIMP scattering are world-leading among neutrino telescopes for WIMP masses $m_{\chi }>100$ GeV.