Exact Cross Sections for the Neutralino WIMP Pair-Annihilation

We derive a full set of exact, analytic expressions for the annihilation of the lightest neutralino pairs into all two-body tree-level final states in the framework of minimal supersymmetry. We make no simplifying assumptions about the neutralino nor about sfermion masses and mixings other than the absence of explicit CP--violating terms. The expressions should be particularly useful in computing the neutralino WIMP relic abundance without the usual approximation of partial wave expansion.Comment: LaTeX, 46 pages, no figures. Several minor typographical errors correcte

Neutrinos From Particle Decay in the Sun and Earth

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may be indirectly detected by observation of upward muons induced by energetic neutrinos from annihilation of WIMPs that have accumulated in the Sun and/or Earth. Energetic muon neutrinos come from the decays of $\tau$ leptons, $c$, $b$, and $t$ quarks, gauge bosons, and Higgs bosons produced by WIMP annihilation. We provide analytic expressions, suitable for computing the flux of upward muons, for the neutrino energy spectra from decays of all these particles in the center of the Sun and Earth. These analytic expressions should obviate the need for Monte Carlo calculations of the upward-muon flux. We investigate the effects of polarization of the gauge bosons on the neutrino spectra and find that they are small. We also present simple expressions for the second moments of the neutrino distributions which can be used to estimate the rates for observation of neutrino-induced muons from WIMP annihilation.Comment: submitted as a complete encapsulated postscript file, archived with uufiles 32 pages, IASSNS-HEP-94/45, SU-HEP-4240-58

On the effects of Cosmions upon the structure and evolution of very low mass stars

A number of recent studies have suggested that cosmions, or WIMPS, may play an important role in the energetics of the solar interior; in particular, it has been argued that these hypothetical particles may transport sufficient energy within the nuclear-burning solar core so as to depress the solar core temperature to the point of resolving the solar neutrino problem. Solutions to the solar neutrino problem have proven themselves to be quite nonunique, so that it is of some interest whether the cosmion solution can be tested in some independent manner. It is argued that if cosmions solve the solar neutrino problem, then they must also play an important role in the evolution of low mass main sequence stars; and, second, that if they do so, then a simple (long mean free path) model for the interaction of cosmions with baryons leads to changes in the structure of the nuclear-burning core which may be in principal observable. Such changes include suppression of a fully-convective core in very low mass main sequence stars; and a possible thermal runaway in the core of the nuclear burning region. Some of these changes may be directly observable, and hence may provide independent constraints on the properties of the cosmions required to solve the solar neutrino problem, perhaps even ruling them out

Prospects For Detecting Dark Matter With Neutrino Telescopes In Light Of Recent Results From Direct Detection Experiments

Direct detection dark matter experiments, lead by the CDMS collaboration, have placed increasingly stronger constraints on the cross sections for elastic scattering of WIMPs on nucleons. These results impact the prospects for the indirect detection of dark matter using neutrino telescopes. With this in mind, we revisit the prospects for detecting neutrinos produced by the annihilation of WIMPs in the Sun. We find that the latest bounds do not seriously limit the models most accessible to next generation kilometer-scale neutrino telescopes such as IceCube. This is largely due to the fact that models with significant spin-dependent couplings to protons are the least constrained and, at the same time, the most promising because of the efficient capture of WIMPs in the Sun. We identify models where dark matter particles are beyond the reach of any planned direct detection experiments while within reach of neutrino telescopes. In summary, we find that, even when contemplating recent direct detection results, neutrino telescopes still have the opportunity to play an important as well as complementary role in the search for particle dark matter.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Contamination in the MACHO dataset and the puzzle of LMC Microlensing

In a recent series of three papers, Belokurov, Evans, and Le Du, and Evans and Belokurov, reanalysed the MACHO collaboration data and gave alternative sets of microlensing events and an alternative optical depth to microlensing toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Even though they examined less than 0.2% of the data they claimed that by using a neural net program they had reliably selected a better (and smaller) set of microlensing candidates. Estimating the optical depth from this smaller set, they claim that the MACHO collaboration overestimated the optical depth by a significant factor and that the MACHO microlensing experiment is consistent with lensing by known stars in the Milky Way and LMC. As we show below, the analysis by these authors contains several errors which render their conclusions meaningless. Their efficiency analysis is clearly in error, and since they did not search through the entire MACHO dataset, they do not know how many microlensing events their neural net would find in the data or what optical depth their method would give. Examination of their selected events suggests that their method misses low S/N events and thus would have lower efficiency than the MACHO selection criteria. In addition, their method is likely to give many more false positives (non-lensing events identified as lensing). Both effects would increase their estimated optical depth. Finally, we note that the EROS discovery that LMC event-23 is a variable star reduces the MACHO collaboration estimates of optical depth and Macho halo fraction by around 8%, and does open the question of additional contamination.Comment: 5 pages latex, 1 postscript figure, version accepted by MNRAS, revisions in phrasing and reference

A Simple Way of Calculating Cosmological Relic Density

A simple procedure is presented which leads to a dramatic simplification in the calculation of the relic density of stable particles in the Universe.Comment: 7 pages in LaTex, no figures; University of Michigan preprint UM-TH-94-02 (February 1994). Changes: a coefficient in $b^0$ (Eq. 16) corrected; added Acknowledgements and revised Note Added; plain LaTex only (no need to use RevTex

Distinguishing Supersymmetry From Universal Extra Dimensions or Little Higgs Models With Dark Matter Experiments

There are compelling reasons to think that new physics will appear at or below the TeV-scale. It is not known what form this new physics will take, however. Although The Large Hadron collider is very likely to discover new particles associated with the TeV-scale, it may be difficult for it to determine the nature of those particles, whether superpartners, Kaluza-Klein modes or other states. In this article, we consider how direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments may provide information complementary to hadron colliders, which can be used to discriminate between supersymmetry, models with universal extra dimensions, and Little Higgs theories. We find that, in many scenarios, dark matter experiments can be effectively used to distinguish between these possibilities.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, references added in version

Inelastic Dark Matter As An Efficient Fuel For Compact Stars

Dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles is predicted to become gravitationally captured and accumulate in stars. While the subsequent annihilations of such particles lead to the injection of energy into stellar cores, elastically scattering dark matter particles do not generally yield enough energy to observably impact stellar phenomenology. Dark matter particles which scatter inelastically with nuclei (such that they reconcile the annual modulation reported by DAMA with the null results of CDMS and other experiments), however, can be captured by and annihilate in compact stars at a much higher rate. As a result, old white dwarf stars residing in high dark matter density environments can be prevented from cooling below several thousand degrees Kelvin. Observations of old, cool white dwarfs in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, or in the inner kiloparsec of the Milky Way, can thus potentially provide a valuable test of the inelastic dark matter hypothesis.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figur