Dark Matter-Neutrino Scattering in the Galactic Centre with IceCube

Abstract

While there is evidence for the existence of dark matter, its properties have yet to be discovered. Simultaneously, the nature of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube remains unresolved. If dark matter and neutrinos are coupled to each other, they could exhibit a non-zero elastic scattering cross section. Such an interaction between an isotropic extragalactic neutrino flux and dark matter would be concentrated in the Galactic Centre, where the dark matter column density is the greatest. This scattering would attenuate the flux of high-energy neutrinos, which could be observed in the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory. In this thesis, an unbinned likelihood analysis is performed to set sensitivities for the seven year medium energy starting event cascades dataset for a signal considering possible dark matter-neutrino interaction scenarios. This signal would be observed as a suppression of the high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux in the direction of the Galactic Centre. It is shown that IceCube can set constraints on possible dark matter-neutrino interactions that are complementary to constraints set by large scale structure surveys and the cosmic microwave background.