Probing flavor-dependent neutrino-dark matter interactions with the flavor composition of high-energy cosmic neutrinos
Abstract
High-energy astrophysical neutrinos probe non-standard neutrino interactions over cosmological distances. We study flavor-dependent interactions between neutrinos and dark matter (DM) for neutrinos produced inside the dense DM spike surrounding the supermassive black hole of the blazar TXS~0506+056. A flavor-diagonal potential Vα=Aα ρχ(r) induced by coherent forward scattering modifies the mixing in the medium, and the flavor-dependent scattering cross section attenuates the neutrino flux along the line of sight. We show that the propagation is adiabatic throughout the spike and the halo, so that the matter eigenstates produced at the source are conserved and only re-projected onto flavors at Earth. Two regimes emerge. For A≪ 10−38 cm3 the mixing is unaffected and the IceCube three-flavor composition limits the cross section to σνχ/mχ≲ 10−28 cm2/GeV. For larger A the interacting flavor is isolated into a single matter eigenstate at the source; the two remaining eigenstates escape without attenuation, producing a survival plateau that relaxes the limits by up to four orders of magnitude. The sign of the potential can differ between neutrinos and antineutrinos, so that the isolated state connects to different vacuum mass eigenstates for ν and ν̅, which leaves a characteristic imprint on the flavor composition even without attenuation. The requirement that the potential induced by the dark matter density around Earth do not affect the observed PMNS matrix, so that the flavor projection at Earth is performed with the local matter mixing, gives A≲ 10−30cm 3. The combined constraints are presented in the (A,σνχ/mχ) plane and compared with a vector-mediator benchmark.
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BibTeX
@misc{choi2026probing,
title = {{Probing flavor-dependent neutrino-dark matter interactions with the flavor composition of high-energy cosmic neutrinos}},
author = {Ki-Young Choi and Ankhbayar Tugssaikhan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.09037},
eprint = {2611.09037},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09037},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Probing flavor-dependent neutrino-dark matter interactions with the flavor composition of high-energy cosmic neutrinos
AU - Ki-Young Choi
AU - Ankhbayar Tugssaikhan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.09037
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09037
AB - High-energy astrophysical neutrinos probe non-standard neutrino interactions over cosmological distances. We study flavor-dependent interactions between neutrinos and dark matter (DM) for neutrinos produced inside the dense DM spike surrounding the supermassive black hole of the blazar TXS~0506+056. A flavor-diagonal potential V_α=A_α ρ_χ(r) induced by coherent forward scattering modifies the mixing in the medium, and the flavor-dependent scattering cross section attenuates the neutrino flux along the line of sight. We show that the propagation is adiabatic throughout the spike and the halo, so that the matter eigenstates produced at the source are conserved and only re-projected onto flavors at Earth. Two regimes emerge. For A≪ 10^−38 cm^3 the mixing is unaffected and the IceCube three-flavor composition limits the cross section to σ_νχ/m_χ≲ 10^−28 cm^2/GeV. For larger A the interacting flavor is isolated into a single matter eigenstate at the source; the two remaining eigenstates escape without attenuation, producing a survival plateau that relaxes the limits by up to four orders of magnitude. The sign of the potential can differ between neutrinos and antineutrinos, so that the isolated state connects to different vacuum mass eigenstates for ν and ν̅, which leaves a characteristic imprint on the flavor composition even without attenuation. The requirement that the potential induced by the dark matter density around Earth do not affect the observed PMNS matrix, so that the flavor projection at Earth is performed with the local matter mixing, gives A≲ 10^−30cm ^3. The combined constraints are presented in the (A,σ_νχ/m_χ) plane and compared with a vector-mediator benchmark.
ER -