Abstract
Dark matter particles could be superheavy, provided their lifetime is much longer than the age of the Universe. Using the sensitivity of the Pierre Auger Observatory to ultrahigh energy neutrinos and photons, we constrain a specific extension of the Standard Model of particle physics that meets the lifetime requirement for a superheavy particle by coupling it to a sector of ultralight sterile neutrinos. Our results show that, for a typical dark coupling constant of 0.1, the mixing angle θm between active and sterile neutrinos must satisfy, roughly, θm≲1.5×10-6(MX/109 GeV)-2 for a mass MX of the dark-matter particle between 108 GeV and 1011 GeV.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | L081101 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 109 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Apr 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malarg\u00FCe. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina\u2014Comisi\u00F3n Nacional de Energ\u00EDa At\u00F3mica; Agencia Nacional de Promoci\u00F3n Cient\u00EDfica y Tecnol\u00F3gica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient\u00EDficas y T\u00E9cnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malarg\u00FCe; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Le\u00F1as; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia\u2014the Australian Research Council; Belgium\u2014Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS); Research Foundation Flanders (FWO); Brazil\u2014Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient\u00EDfico e Tecnol\u00F3gico (CNPq); Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP); Funda\u00E7\u00E3o de Amparo \u00E0 Pesquisa do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); S\u00E3o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) Grants No. 2019/10151-2, No. 2010/07359-6, and No. 1999/05404-3; Minist\u00E9rio da Ci\u00EAncia, Tecnologia, Inova\u00E7\u00F5es e Comunica\u00E7\u00F5es (MCTIC); Czech Republic Grants No. MSMT CR LTT18004, No. LM2015038, No. LM2018102, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001402, No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/18_046/0016010, and No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/17_049/0008422; France\u2014Centre de Calcul IN2P3/CNRS; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Conseil R\u00E9gional Ile-de-France; D\u00E9partement Physique Nucl\u00E9aire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS); D\u00E9partement Sciences de l\u2019Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS); Institut Lagrange de Paris (ILP) Grant No. LABEX ANR-10-LABX-63 within the Investissements d\u2019Avenir Programme Grant No. ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02; Germany\u2014Bundesministerium f\u00FCr Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Finanzministerium Baden-W\u00FCrttemberg; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP); Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF); Ministerium f\u00FCr Innovation, Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen; Ministerium f\u00FCr Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-W\u00FCrttemberg; Italy\u2014Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF); Ministero dell\u2019Istruzione, dell\u2019Universit\u00E1 e della Ricerca (MIUR); CETEMPS Center of Excellence; Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE); M\u00E9xico\u2014Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog\u00EDa (CONACYT) No. 167733; Universidad Nacional Aut\u00F3noma de M\u00E9xico (UNAM); PAPIIT DGAPA-UNAM; The Netherlands\u2014Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO); Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative; Poland\u2014Ministry of Education and Science, Grant No. DIR/WK/2018/11; National Science Centre, Grants No. 2016/22/M/ST9/00198, No. 2016/23/B/ST9/01635, and No. 2020/39/B/ST9/01398; Portugal\u2014Portuguese national funds and FEDER funds within Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade through Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e a Tecnologia (COMPETE); Romania\u2014Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI\u2014UEFISCDI, Projects No. PN19150201/16N/2019, No. PN1906010, TE128, and No. PED289, within PNCDI III; Slovenia\u2014Slovenian Research Agency, Grants No. P1-0031, No. P1-0385, No. NI0-0033, and No. N1-0111; Spain\u2014Ministerio de Econom\u00EDa, Industria y Competitividad (FPA2017-85114-P and PID2019\u2013104676GB-C32), Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2017/07), Junta de Andaluc\u00EDa (SOMM17/6104/UGR, P18-FR-4314) Feder Funds, RENATA Red Nacional Tem\u00E1tica de Astropart\u00EDculas (FPA2015-68783-REDT) and Mar\u00EDa de Maeztu Unit of Excellence (MDM-2016-0692); USA\u2014Department of Energy, Contracts No. DE-AC02-07CH11359, No. DE-FR02-04ER41300, No. DE-FG02-99ER41107, and No. DE-SC0011689; National Science Foundation, Grant No. 0450696; The Grainger Foundation; Marie Curie-IRSES/EPLANET; European Particle Physics Latin American Network; and UNESCO. We acknowledge for this work the support of the Institut Pascal at Universit\u00E9 Paris-Saclay during the Paris-Saclay Astroparticle Symposium 2022, with the support of the P2IO Laboratory of Excellence (program \u201CInvestissements d\u2019avenir\u201D ANR-11-IDEX-0003-01 Paris-Saclay and ANR-10-LABX-0038), the P2I axis of the Graduate School of Physics of Universit\u00E9 Paris-Saclay, as well as IJCLab, CEA, APPEC, IAS, OSUPS, and the IN2P3 master projet UCMN. Finally, we thank S. Cl\u00E9ry, Y. Mambrini and M. Pierre for numerous discussions about the BSM benchmark studied in this work.
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© 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.