2002/06/21 by A. Bottino, G. Fiorentini, N. Fornengo +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.053005
published as Phys.Rev. D66 (2002) 053005 · 31 pages, 2 tables and 9 figures, typeset with ReVTeX4. The paper may also be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers/helio.ps.gz or through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart/index.html
arxiv created 2002/06/21 · openalex publication_date 2002/09/23 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate whether present data on helioseismology and solar neutrino fluxes may constrain weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-matter interactions in the range of WIMP parameters under current exploration in WIMP searches. We find that, for a WIMP mass of 30 GeV, once the effect of the presence of WIMPs in the Sun's interior is maximized, the squared isothermal sound speed is modified, with respect to the standard solar model, by at most 0.4% at the Sun's center. The maximal effect on the 8B solar neutrino flux is a reduction of 4.5%. Larger masses lead to smaller effects. These results imply that present sensitivities in the measurements of solar properties, though greatly improved in recent years, do not provide information or constraints on WIMP properties of relevance for dark matter. Furthermore, we show that, when current bounds from direct WIMP searches are taken into account, the effect induced by WIMPs with dominant coherent interactions is drastically reduced as compared to the values quoted above. The case of neutralinos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is also discussed.