A search for muon neutrinos from Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilations in the Sun has been performed with the 22-string configuration of the IceCube neutrino detector using data collected in 104.3 days of live time in 2007. No excess over the expected atmospheric background has been observed. Upper limits have been obtained on the annihilation rate of captured lightest Kaluza-Klein particle (LKP) WIMPs in the Sun and converted to limits on the LKP-proton cross sections for LKP masses in the range 250-3000 GeV. These results are the most stringent limits to date on LKP annihilation in the Sun.
The AMANDA-II detector, operating since 2000 in the deep ice at the geographic South Pole, has accumulated a large sample of atmospheric muon neutrinos in the 100 GeV to 10 TeV energy range. The zenith angle and energy distribution of these events can be used to search for various phenomenological signatures of quantum gravity in the neutrino sector, such as violation of Lorentz invariance or quantum decoherence. Analyzing a set of 5511 candidate neutrino events collected during 1387 days of livetime from 2000 to 2006, we find no evidence for such effects and set upper limits on violation of Lorentz invariance and quantum decoherence parameters using a maximum likelihood method. Given the absence of evidence for new flavor-changing physics, we use the same methodology to determine the conventional atmospheric muon neutrino flux above 100 GeV.
We present a search for point sources of high energy neutrinos using 3.8 yr of data recorded by AMANDA-II during 2000-2006. After reconstructing muon tracks and applying selection criteria designed to optimally retain neutrino-induced events originating in the northern sky, we arrive at a sample of 6595 candidate events, predominantly from atmospheric neutrinos with primary energy 100 GeV to 8 TeV. Our search of this sample reveals no indications of a neutrino point source. We place the most stringent limits to date on E(-2) neutrino fluxes from points in the northern sky, with an average upper limit of E(2)Phi(nu mu)+nu(tau)<= 5.2x10(-11) TeV cm(-2) s(-1) on the sum of nu(mu) and nu(tau) fluxes, assumed equal, over the energy range from 1.9 TeV to 2.5 PeV.
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies of the Local Group are close satellites of the Milky Way characterized by a large mass-to-light ratio and are not expected to be the site of nonthermal high-energy gamma-ray emission or intense star formation. Therefore they are among the most promising candidates for indirect dark matter searches. During the last years the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes observed five of these dwarf galaxies for more than 140 hours in total, searching for TeV gamma-ray emission from annihilation of dark matter particles. The new results of the deep exposure of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy, the first observations of the Coma Berenices and Fornax dwarves and the reanalysis of two more dwarf spheroidal galaxies already published by the H.E.S.S. Collaboration, Carina and Sculptor, are presented. In the absence of a significant signal new constraints on the annihilation cross section applicable to weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are derived by combining the observations of the five dwarf galaxies. The combined exclusion limit depends on the WIMP mass and the best constraint is reached at 1-2 TeV masses with a cross-section upper bound of similar to 3.9 x 10(-24) cm(3) s(-1) at a 95% confidence level.
Diffuse gamma-ray emission is the most prominent observable signature of celestial cosmic-ray interactions at high energies. While already being investigated at GeVenergies over several decades, assessments of diffuse gamma-ray emission at TeVenergies remain sparse. After completion of the systematic survey of the inner Galaxy, the H.E.S.S. experiment is in a prime position to observe large-scale diffuse emission at TeVenergies. Data of the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey are investigated in regions off known gamma-ray sources. Corresponding gamma-ray flux measurements were made over an extensive grid of celestial locations. Longitudinal and latitudinal profiles of the observed gamma-ray fluxes show characteristic excess emission not attributable to known gamma-ray sources. For the first time large-scale gamma-ray emission along the Galactic plane using imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes has been observed. While the background subtraction technique limits the ability to recover modest variation on the scale of the H.E.S.S. field of view or larger, which is characteristic of the inverse Compton scatter-induced Galactic diffuse emission, contributions of neutral pion decay as well as emission from unresolved gamma-ray sources can be recovered in the observed signal to a large fraction. Calculations show that the minimum gamma-ray emission from pi(0) decay represents a significant contribution to the total signal. This detection is interpreted as a mix of diffuse Galactic gamma-ray emission and unresolved sources.
Dark matter particle annihilation or decay can produce monochromatic gamma-ray lines and contribute to the diffuse gamma-ray background. Flux upper limits are presented for gamma-ray spectral lines from 7 to 200 GeV and for the diffuse gamma-ray background from 4.8 GeV to 264 GeV obtained from two years of Fermi Large Area Telescope data integrated over most of the sky. We give cross-section upper limits and decay lifetime lower limits for dark matter models that produce gamma-ray lines or contribute to the diffuse spectrum, including models proposed as explanations of the PAMELA and Fermi cosmic-ray data.
The MEGA experiment, which searched for the muon- and electron-number violating decay μ +→e + γ, is described. The spectrometer system, the calibrations, the data taking procedures, the data analysis, and the sensitivity of the experiment are discussed. The most stringent upper limit on the branching ratio, B(μ + →e + γ)<1.2×10 -11 with 90% confidence, is derived from a likelihood analysis.
The Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array (AMANDA) began collecting data with ten strings in 1997. Results from the first year of operation are presented. Neutrinos coming through the Earth from the Northern Hemisphere are identified by secondary muons moving upward through the array. Cosmic rays in the atmosphere generate a background of downward moving muons, which are about 106 times more abundant than the upward moving muons. Over 130 days of exposure, we observed a total of about 300 neutrino events. In the same period, a background of 1.05 × 109 cosmic ray muon events was recorded. The observed neutrino flux is consistent with atmospheric neutrino predictions. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that 90% of these events lie in the energy range 66 GeV to 3.4 TeV. The observation of atmospheric neutrinos consistent with expectations establishes AMANDA-B10 as a working neutrino telescope.
A search for nearly vertical up-going muon-neutrinos from neutralino annihilations in the center of the Earth has been performed with the AMANDA-B10 neutrino detector. The data collected in 130.1 days of live time in 1997, ∼10 9 events, have been analyzed for this search. No excess over the expected atmospheric neutrino background has been observed. An upper limit at 90% confidence level has been obtained on the annihilation rate of neutralinos in the center of the Earth, as well as the corresponding muon flux limit, both as a function of the neutralino mass in the range 100 GeV-5000 GeV. © 2002 The American Physical Society.
We report on a search for electromagnetic and/or hadronic showers (cascades) induced by a diffuse flux of neutrinos with energies between 5 TeV and 300 TeV from extraterrestrial sources. Cascades may be produced by matter interactions of all flavors of neutrinos, and contained cascades have better energy resolution and afford better background rejection than throughgoing νμ-induced muons. Data taken in 1997 with the AMANDA detector were searched for events with a high-energy cascadelike signature. The observed events are consistent with expected backgrounds from atmospheric neutrinos and catastrophic energy losses from atmospheric muons. Effective volumes for all flavors of neutrinos, which allow the calculation of limits for any neutrino flux model, are presented. The limit on cascades from a diffuse flux of νe+ νμ + ντ+ ν̄e + ν̄μ+ ν̄τ is E2(dΦ/dE)<9.8×10-6 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, assuming a neutrino flavor flux ratio of 1:1:1 at the detector. The limit on cascades from a diffuse flux of νe+ν̄e is E2(dΦ/dE)<6. 5×10-6 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, independent of the assumed neutrino flavor flux ratio. © 2003 The American Physical Society.
The VERITAS array of Cherenkov telescopes has carried out a deep observational program on the nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxy Segue 1. We report on the results of nearly 48 hours of good quality selected data, taken between January 2010 and May 2011. No significant γ-ray emission is detected at the nominal position of Segue 1, and upper limits on the integrated flux are derived. According to recent studies, Segue 1 is the most dark matter-dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxy currently known. We derive stringent bounds on various annihilating and decaying dark matter particle models. The upper limits on the velocity-weighted annihilation cross-section are ⟨σv⟩95% CL≲10−23 cm3 s−1, improving our limits from previous observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies by at least a factor of 2 for dark matter particle masses mχ≳300 GeV. The lower limits on the decay lifetime are at the level of τ95% CL≳1024 s. Finally, we address the interpretation of the cosmic ray lepton anomalies measured by ATIC and PAMELA in terms of dark matter annihilation, and show that the VERITAS observations of Segue 1 disfavor such a scenario.
The mass composition of cosmic rays contains important clues about their origin. Accurate measurements are needed to resolve longstanding issues such as the transition from Galactic to extra-Galactic origin and the nature of the cutoff observed at the highest energies. Composition can be studied by measuring the atmospheric depth of the shower maximum Xmax of air showers generated by high-energy cosmic rays hitting the Earth’s atmosphere. We present a new method to reconstruct Xmax based on radio measurements. The radio emission mechanism of air showers is a complex process that creates an asymmetric intensity pattern on the ground. The shape of this pattern strongly depends on the longitudinal development of the shower. We reconstruct Xmax by fitting two-dimensional intensity profiles, simulated with CoREAS, to data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope. In the dense LOFAR core, air showers are detected by hundreds of antennas simultaneously. The simulations fit the data very well, indicating that the radiation mechanism is now well understood. The typical uncertainty on the reconstruction of Xmax for LOFAR showers is 17 g/cm2.
We examined whether significant constraints on matter-antimatter admixture can be derived from gamma-ray observations of colliding clusters of galaxies with Fermi-LAT. We selected ten known systems of colliding clusters of galaxies for the analysis and computed the upper bounds on matter-antimatter admixture in these systems, which range from 7×10−9 to 2×10−6. This allowed us to exclude a symmetric universe on scales of order ∼20 Mpc at the confidence level of 99.9%. Adopting the number of systems of colliding galaxy clusters from the Marenostrum Universe cosmological simulation, we checked if the Fermi-LAT second source catalog contains a sufficient number of gamma-ray sources to provide us with the required number of sources possibly associated with pp¯annihilation from cluster-anticluster collisions. We found that a matter-antimatter-symmetric universe is strongly ruled out on scales of order ∼20 Mpc if a matter-antimatter admixture in these bullet-like systems is of f≳10−5, and on scales of order ∼400 Mpc if f≳10−4.