Prospects for detecting Dark Matter with neutrino telescopes in Intermediate Mass Black Holes scenarios

Abstract

Current strategies of indirect Dark Matter detection with neutrino telescopes are based on the search for high-energy neutrinos from the Solar core or from the center of the Earth. Here, we propose a new strategy based on the detection of neutrinos from Dark Matter annihilations in 'mini-spikes' around Intermediate Mass Black Holes. Neutrino fluxes, in this case, depend on the annihilation cross-section of Dark Matter particles, whereas solar and terrestrial fluxes are sensitive to the scattering cross-section off nucleons, a circumstance that makes the proposed search complementary to the existing ones. We discuss the prospects for detection with upcoming under-water and under-ice experiments such as ANTARES and IceCube, and show that several, up to many, sources could be detected with both experiments. A kilometer scale telescope in the Mediterranean appears to be ideally suited for the proposed search.

Comments: 11 pages, 2 figures. Typo in Eq.1 corrected; matches accepted version