Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Interactions in the Sun as background for dark matter searches

Abstract

[EN] Neutrino telescopes have been proposed as efficient tools for indirect dark matter searches, especially using the Sun as source for its good capability to capture dark matter and since we do not expect high-energy neutrinos from it. However, the last statement should be taken with caution because high-energy neutrinos may come from cosmic particle interactions in the atmosphere of the Sun and producing neutrinos. In this work, we describe an analysis of the ANTARES neutrino telescope optimised for the observation of neutrinos coming from the atmosphere of the Sun due to cosmic particles interactions. Focusing in the 10 GeV - 10 TeV energy range and using 2007-2012 data, the sensitivity obtained for the flux is approximately 1012 km-2 y -1 , whereas the expected flux is two order of magnitudes below. From this, we can conclude that present high-energy neutrino telescopes dark matter searches in the Sun can indeed neglect this contribution, but could play a role in future detectors with better neutrino flux sensitivities in the 10 GeV - 10 TeV energy range and very good angular resolution.