A New Probe of Strongly-Interacting Dark Sector using Neutrino Telescopes
Abstract
A confining dark sector modeled after quantum chromodynamics provides a well-motivated framework for strongly-interacting dark matter. We show that dark vector mesons in a confining dark sector can be resonantly produced in high-energy neutrino scattering on the cosmic neutrino background, generating a distinctive absorption feature in the cosmic neutrino energy spectrum. Unlike conventional attenuation effects, this feature directly reflects the mass spectrum of dark resonances and can therefore serve as a spectroscopic signature of a strongly-interacting dark sector. We find that a broad range of dark-sector parameter space is within the reach of future neutrino telescopes, including IceCube-Gen2 Radio. Our proposal thus turns the cosmic neutrino background into a target for discovering dark-sector resonances, while simultaneously providing a novel probe of dark sector interactions with neutrinos.
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BibTeX
@misc{cruz2026probe,
title = {{A New Probe of Strongly-Interacting Dark Sector using Neutrino Telescopes}},
author = {Jose A. Macias Cruz and Christopher V. Cappiello and P. S. Bhupal Dev and Suchita Kulkarni},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.24887},
eprint = {2609.24887},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24887},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A New Probe of Strongly-Interacting Dark Sector using Neutrino Telescopes
AU - Jose A. Macias Cruz
AU - Christopher V. Cappiello
AU - P. S. Bhupal Dev
AU - Suchita Kulkarni
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.24887
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24887
AB - A confining dark sector modeled after quantum chromodynamics provides a well-motivated framework for strongly-interacting dark matter. We show that dark vector mesons in a confining dark sector can be resonantly produced in high-energy neutrino scattering on the cosmic neutrino background, generating a distinctive absorption feature in the cosmic neutrino energy spectrum. Unlike conventional attenuation effects, this feature directly reflects the mass spectrum of dark resonances and can therefore serve as a spectroscopic signature of a strongly-interacting dark sector. We find that a broad range of dark-sector parameter space is within the reach of future neutrino telescopes, including IceCube-Gen2 Radio. Our proposal thus turns the cosmic neutrino background into a target for discovering dark-sector resonances, while simultaneously providing a novel probe of dark sector interactions with neutrinos.
ER -