Upper-limit procedures on signatures of muons originating in dark matter annihilations occurring in the Earth

Some WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) models suggest dark matter can become gravitationally bound in the Earth, if the particles lose kinetic energy through WIMP-nucleon collisions. In certain scenarios, dark photons are produced through WIMP/anti-WIMP annihilations and these dark photons could then mix with our standard model photons, producing upward-traveling muons. Large experimental apparatuses like CMS could detect these muons, but there are backgrounds from galactic neutrino-induced muons. In any search, there needs to be an established procedure for setting an upper-limit and in this case it is complicated by needing to account for different models of the dark matter density profile in the Earth. In this poster, we present the challenges of and an approach to setting upper limits. The current status of this study will be presented.