Bi-Weekly IIHE Internal Seminar: Jonathan Miller, "Using the IceCube Observatory to search for Secluded Dark Matter"

Wednesday 26 Sept 2012, 11:00 → 11:30 Europe/Brussels

IIHE Large Seminar Room (IIHE)

Interest has developed in models where dark matter is secluded from the Standard Model via a mediator. Dark matter may be gravitationally captured in the Sun and annihilate into a non-Standard Model mediator,  which subsequently decays into Standard Model particles and may decay in the vicinity of the Earth. In some models the result from such a decay, close co-linear muons, can be a unique signal in a neutrino telescope, such as the IceCube detector at the South Pole. A potential signal can be discriminated from atmospheric neutrinos via the energy deposition topology in the detector. I will introduce the secluded dark matter framework and the expected sensitivity from an analysis for dark matter using IceCube in the 79-string configuration.