SuperK Observations Strongly Constrain Leptophilic Dark Matter Scattering
Leptophilic dark matter models (which primarily couple to leptonic standard model particles), are a well-motivated class of dark matter models that can explain several anomalies in the neutrino and charged-lepton sectors (for example, g-2). However, these models are difficult to target with traditional direct detection, because they do not benefit from the A^4 enhancement typical of spin-independent nuclear scattering. The huge electron density in the Sun makes it a compelling target for these searches -- and fortunately, our efforts to search for dark matter capture in the Sun are highly enhanced in leptonic models, because any subsequent dark matter annihilation will produce a high-energy neutrino flux that escapes the Sun and is detectable from Earth. We use 10 years of SuperK observations, which have not detected any neutrino excess from the Sun above 100 MeV, to strongly constrain this class of models -- obtaining constraints that exceed terrestrial direct detection by an order of magnitude across many leptophilic annihilation states. These results (along with the promise of upcoming HyperK data) indicate that solar neutrino searches may provide the strongest constraints on leptophilic dark matter scattering.
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- Highlights and Overview
- Dark Matter(76)
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- Axion Dark Matter(3)
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- Cosmic-Ray Astronomy(13)
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- Neutrino Astronomy(5)
- Solar Physics(7)
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