Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Interactions in the Sun as background for dark matter searches

M. Ardid, I. Felis and M. Lotze, on behalf of the ANTARES Collaboration

Neutrino telescopes have been proposed as efficient tools for indirect dark matter searches,
especially using the Sun as source for its good capability to capture dark matter and since we
do not expect high-energy neutrinos from it. However, the last statement should be taken with
caution because high-energy neutrinos may come from cosmic particle interactions in the
atmosphere of the Sun and producing neutrinos. In this work, we describe an analysis of the
ANTARES neutrino telescope optimised for the observation of neutrinos coming from the
atmosphere of the Sun due to cosmic particles interactions. Focusing in the 100 GeV - 10 TeV
energy range and using 2007-2012 data, the sensitivity obtained is approximately $10^{10}$ km$^2$ y$^{-1}$
,
whereas the flux expected is two order of magnitudes below. From this, we can conclude that
present high-energy neutrino telescopes dark matter searches in the Sun can indeed neglect
this contribution, but could play a role in future detectors with better neutrino flux sensitivities
in the 10 GeV - 10 TeV energy range and very good angular resolution.