2006/08/31 by J. F. Beacom, John F. Beacom, Nicole F. Bell +1 · 150 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Astrophysics #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cross section (physics) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Light dark matter #Neutrino #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar field dark matter #Unitarity #Upper and lower bounds #astro-ph #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.231301
published in Physical Review Letters 99(23), 231301 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 3 figures; version accepted for publication in PRL
openalex publication_date 2007/12/05 · arxiv created 2007/12/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08
We consider dark matter annihilation into standard model particles and show that the least detectable final states, namely, neutrinos, define an upper bound on the total cross section. Calculating the cosmic diffuse neutrino signal, and comparing it to the measured terrestrial atmospheric neutrino background, we derive a strong and general bound. This can be evaded if the annihilation products are dominantly new and truly invisible particles. Our bound is much stronger than the unitarity bound at the most interesting masses, shows that dark matter halos cannot be significantly modified by annihilations, and can be improved by a factor of 10-100 with existing neutrino experiments.