Resonant neutrino flavor conversion within dark matter spikes
Abstract
We investigate how neutrino--dark matter (DM) interactions modify the flavor composition of high-energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Coherent forward scattering in a DM spike around the central supermassive black hole can generate a flavor-dependent potential, inducing flavor conversion as the neutrinos escape. We calculate the flavor composition at Earth for pion-decay and muon-damped sources and find substantial departures from vacuum-oscillation expectations. At neutrino energies around 100 TeV, the matter potential begins to compete with vacuum oscillations when the coupling-weighted net DM number density reaches |εα(nχ−nχ̅)|∼1018 cm−3. We compare our predictions with IceCube flavor triangle measurements under the illustrative assumption that the diffuse flux originates from AGNs with common neutrino-production and DM-spike properties. Under this assumption, when the DM-induced potential acts on the muon flavor and dominates the vacuum terms at production, the pγ muon-damped predictions lie outside the 95\% MESE contour. High-energy neutrino flavor measurements can therefore provide a novel probe of neutrino-DM interactions in astrophysical environments.
Related
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- Neutrino Flavor Conversion Shapes the Rate of Failed Core-collapse Supernovae
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- Neutrino flavor conversion alters the lepton-emission self-sustained asymmetry in core-collapse supernovae
BibTeX
@misc{dev2026resonant,
title = {{Resonant neutrino flavor conversion within dark matter spikes}},
author = {P. S. Bhupal Dev and Elisa Gaido and Alejandro Ibarra and Yago Porto},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.26773},
eprint = {2609.26773},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26773},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Resonant neutrino flavor conversion within dark matter spikes
AU - P. S. Bhupal Dev
AU - Elisa Gaido
AU - Alejandro Ibarra
AU - Yago Porto
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.26773
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26773
AB - We investigate how neutrino--dark matter (DM) interactions modify the flavor composition of high-energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Coherent forward scattering in a DM spike around the central supermassive black hole can generate a flavor-dependent potential, inducing flavor conversion as the neutrinos escape. We calculate the flavor composition at Earth for pion-decay and muon-damped sources and find substantial departures from vacuum-oscillation expectations. At neutrino energies around 100 TeV, the matter potential begins to compete with vacuum oscillations when the coupling-weighted net DM number density reaches |ε_α(n_χ−n_χ̅)|∼10^18 cm^−3. We compare our predictions with IceCube flavor triangle measurements under the illustrative assumption that the diffuse flux originates from AGNs with common neutrino-production and DM-spike properties. Under this assumption, when the DM-induced potential acts on the muon flavor and dominates the vacuum terms at production, the pγ muon-damped predictions lie outside the 95\% MESE contour. High-energy neutrino flavor measurements can therefore provide a novel probe of neutrino-DM interactions in astrophysical environments.
ER -