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Probing dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center with TRIDENT

Yingwei Wang1,*,†, Xinhui Chu1,*,‡, Andrew Cheek1,2,§, Iwan Morton-Blake1,∥, Qichao Chang1, Gwenael Giacinti1, Samy Kaci1, Xin Xiang1,2,3,¶, Donglian Xu1,2,3 et al.

Fuyudi Zhang1

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: yingweiw@sjtu.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: xinh-chu@sjtu.edu.cn
  • §Contact author: acheek@sjtu.edu.cn
  • ∥Contact author: iblake@sjtu.edu.cn
  • Contact author: xxiang@sjtu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063008 – Published 4 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/djnq-kfnh

Abstract

We determine the future sensitivity of the TRIDENT neutrino telescope to dark matter annihilation in the Galactic Center. By applying the full detector design and assuming an Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) halo profile, we show that TRIDENT will probe annihilation cross section down to ⟨σv⟩≈5×10−27  cm3 s−1 for 10 TeV dark matter, falling below the thermal freeze-out benchmark. The analysis is carried out with all-flavor neutrino interactions, where we demonstrate that cascade events, primarily due to νe,τ, show greater sensitivity to a dark matter signal compared to the more commonly studied track events. Furthermore, we highlight the impact of a previously overlooked background, Galactic neutrinos produced from interactions between hadronic cosmic rays and interstellar gas. We find dark matter sensitivities are more strongly degraded in the high energy region above ∼10  TeV, with a maximal weakening of approximately a factor of 2. This effect remains smaller than the uncertainty associated with the dark matter density profile but can nonetheless mimic a positive annihilation signal. We contextualize these results with a concrete particle model and show that TRIDENT will be able to probe the most interesting untested parts of parameter space.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063008– Published 4 September, 2026
  • Received 5 February 2026
  • Accepted 14 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the 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.

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