Prospects for higgsino-singlino dark matter detection at IceCube and PINGU

Abstract

We study neutralino dark matter (DM) with large singlino fractions in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). We perform a detailed analysis of the parameter space regions of the model that give rise to such singlino-dominated neutralinos while satisfying the constraints from Higgs boson searches at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as well as from b-physics experiments. We find that this DM can yield a thermal relic density consistent with the Planck measurement in mass regions where the lightest neutralino of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) generally cannot. This is particularly true for lighter DM masses, either less than 10 GeV or between 60-100 GeV, and for heavier DM masses, between 500-1000 GeV. We then analyse the prospects for indirect detection of such DM at the IceCube neutrino telescope, assuming the complete 86-string configuration including DeepCore. We also consider the added sensitivity to low-mass DM with the proposed PINGU extension. We find that IceCube is sensitive to some regions of the NMSSM parameter space containing singlino-dominated DM and that a subset of such model points are already ruled out by the IceCube one-year data. IceCube will also be sensitive to some parameter space regions that will not be probed by the upcoming ton-scale direct detection experiments. Moreover, we find that PINGU will be sensitive to DM in the 10 GeV range.