Illuminating Very Heavy Dark Matter in the Earth with Tau Neutrinos

Abstract

Dark matter accumulates in the center of the Earth as the planet plows through the dark matter halo in the Milky Way. Possible annihilation of dark matter to Standard Model particles can be probed in indirect dark matter searches. Among possible messengers, neutrinos are uniquely ideal as they can escape dense regions. Therefore, neutrino telescopes, with their large volume and broad energy exposures, offer new opportunities to search for dark matter signals from the center of the Earth. However, such studies have been restricted to dark matter masses below $\sim$ PeV as the Earth becomes opaque to very-high-energy neutrinos. In this study, we demonstrate that neutrino telescopes operating at TeV-PeV energies can probe very heavy dark matter particles if they annihilate to tau neutrinos or tau leptons. Here, we report upper limits on the spin-independent dark matter-nucleon cross section for masses between $10^5$ GeV and $10^{10}$ GeV by using 7.5 years of IceCube high-energy starting event observations. Our results motivate detailed analyses in IceCube and other upcoming neutrino telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere.