2015

Search for light WIMPs by Super-Kamiokande

by Dr Koun Choi

Pacific/Honolulu
WAT 112

WAT 112

Description
Super-Kamiokande (SK) can search for WIMPs by detecting neutrinos produced from WIMP annihilations occurring inside the Sun. In the recent analysis, we include neutrino events with interaction vertices contained in the detector in addition to upward-going muons produced in the surrounding rock. Compared to the previous result which used the upward-going muons only, the signal acceptances for light (few-GeV/c2 ∼ 200-GeV/c2) WIMPs are significantly increased. We fit 3903 days of SK data to search for the contribution of neutrinos from WIMP annihilation in the Sun. We found no significant excess over expected atmospheric-neutrino background and the result is interpreted in terms of upper limit on WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering cross sections. Astrophysical uncertainties, including uncertainties from the velocity distribution, are quantified and reflected on the upper limit for the first time. The result of the first WIMP search using contained events in SK will be presented in this talk.