Speakers
Description
While attempting to identify the particle content of dark matter, one often assumes that Dark Matter is a particle arising from a supersymmetric theory. When a population thereof becomes gravitationally bound in the Sun, mutual annihilations can produce a flux of neutrinos. By estimating how this flux would be recognised by a neutrino telescope one can then make conclusions about whether the proposed model of supersymmetry will be possible to exclude or discover.
I describe studies which include PINGU, a future extension of the neutrino telescope IceCube, in such an analysis. These efforts are based on a likelihood method first presented by P. Scott et al., JCAP11 (2012) 057. The interest in PINGU stems in one regard from its decreased energy threshold, which opens up lower WIMP masses for discovery or rejection than in IceCube. On the other hand, the technical advancements made with PINGU since the previous studies of this type may also be exploited. Based on a relatively event selection, PINGU is characterised by its signal detection efficiency, including systematic uncertainties, energy resolution, and angular resolution in a fast, parametric fashion.
This method has been tested both on phenomenological scans, extracting sensitivity curves, and on importance-sampled scans of the NMSSM (Next-to-Minimimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model), including astrophysical uncertainties. I show these first results, which we are preparing for publication.
