Solar Neutrino Physics: Sensitivity to Light Dark Matter Particles

Abstract

Neutrinos are produced in several neutrino nuclear reactions of the proton-proton chain and carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle that take place at different radii of the Sun's core. Hence, measurements of solar neutrino fluxes provide a precise determination of the local temperature. The accumulation of non-annihilating light dark matter particles (with masses between 5 GeV and 16 GeV) in the Sun produces a change in the local solar structure, namely, a decrease in the central temperature of a few percent. This variation depends on the properties of the dark matter particles, such as the mass of the particle and its spin-independent scattering cross-section on baryon-nuclei, specifically, the scattering with helium, oxygen, and nitrogen among other heavy elements. This temperature effect can be measured in almost all solar neutrino fluxes. In particular, by comparing the neutrino fluxes generated by stellar models with current observations, namely 8 B neutrino fluxes, we find that non-annihilating dark matter particles with a mass smaller than 10 GeV and a spin-independent scattering cross-section with heavy baryon-nuclei larger than 3 × 10 −37 cm −2 produce a variation in the 8 B neutrino fluxes that would be in conflict with current measurements.

A Particle Dark Matter Footprint on the First Generation of Stars

“…In particular, some of these papers have helped to set important constraints on the parameters of symmetric and asymmetric DM. Both the Sun, by means of helioseismogy (Lopes & Silk 2010b;) and solar neutrinos (Lopes & Silk 2010a, 2012a, as well as neutron stars (Kouvaris 2012;Kouvaris & Tinyakov 2011;Kouvaris 2008), are among the most useful stellar objects to constraining the properties of DM.…”

“…In this work, we study the impact of light DM particles in the evolution of low-and intermediate-mass stars. In particular, we choose to focus our study on a class of particles that have properties in common with recent hints of direct detection of DM candidates, but also belong to a theoretical class of DM particles, known as asymmetric χχ-DM particles (Lopes & Silk 2012a). These particles, like WIMPs, are neutral, cold, massive particles that interact with baryons through a mechanism identical to weak interactions.…”

The Sun as a probe of Fundamental Physics and Cosmology

“…The numerical computation of the impact of dark matter in the evolution of the Sun and stars has progressed considerably in the last two decades [20,24,25], however, there are still a few caveats that must be addressed [17].…”

“…As a consequence the spin-independent scattering cross-section of the DM-target Baryon increases from 10 −40 cm 2 to 10 −37 cm 2 . Lopes and Silk [20] have shown that 8 B neutrino fluxes can reject the lower masses and higher values of scattering cross section. Further future 8 B neutrino flux measurements could lead to much better constraints (cf.…”

Dark matter searches with asteroseismology

“…1). This phenomena has been studied in the case of the Sun, where the observations of solar neutrinos and helioseismology have been used to constrain the properties of DM [25][26][27].…”