Not so good $ν$s for Higgsino dark matter as LZ excess: stringent limits from Super-Kamiokande and IceCube

Abstract

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) collaboration has recently reported a single nuclear recoil event at a high recoil energy of about 250 keV. This has been interpreted as inelastic scattering of dark matter that is a supersymmetric Higgsino with a mass splitting between the neutral states of a few 100 keV. Such dark matter may be captured at high recoil in the Sun through scattering on heavy elements in it, and annihilate to $W^+W^-$ and $ZZ$, in turn giving rise to a neutrino flux detectable on Earth. Using measurements of atmospheric electron- and muon-neutrino fluxes by Super-Kamiokande and IceCube, we constrain thermal and non-thermal Higgsino dark matter, excluding inter-state mass splittings $\lesssim 557$ keV. This disfavors Higgsino-like interpretations of the LZ event for standard halo velocities.