Cascades from ultra-high-energy neutrinos
Abstract
Neutrinos produced at the highest energies can interact with cosmic neutrino and radiation backgrounds during their propagation to Earth. The many available νν, νν̅, and νγ channels can lead to their absorption or energy redistribution, whilst the leptonic and hadronic final states may feed secondary fluxes of neutrinos, protons, and electromagnetic particles through the decay or hadronisation of the heavy leptons, bosons, and quarks produced. We present a framework to characterise these propagation effects in detail, \texttt{νpropa}, an extension of the CRPropa Monte Carlo code that interfaces with event generators and to dedicated computations of the relevant cross sections. It also treats flavour oscillations in vacuum. Using this code, we investigate sources at high redshifts (z = 10), and find a strong absorption of the prompt flux beyond~∼ 1021 eV, although the copious secondary neutrinos partially compensate this depletion, also contributing to the spectrum at lower energies. The framework is designed to study scenarios of cosmological neutrino production beyond~EeV energies such as superheavy dark matter, cosmic strings, and primordial black holes, and to yield reliable predictions for the forthcoming neutrino observatories.
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BibTeX
@misc{marco2026cascades,
title = {{Cascades from ultra-high-energy neutrinos}},
author = {Gaetano Di Marco and Rhorry Gauld and Rafael Alves Batista and Alfonso García-Soto and Miguel Á Sánchez-Conde},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.30562},
eprint = {2608.30562},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05742622v1},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Cascades from ultra-high-energy neutrinos
AU - Gaetano Di Marco
AU - Rhorry Gauld
AU - Rafael Alves Batista
AU - Alfonso García-Soto
AU - Miguel Á Sánchez-Conde
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - HAL
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.30562
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05742622v1
AB - Neutrinos produced at the highest energies can interact with cosmic neutrino and radiation backgrounds during their propagation to Earth. The many available νν, νν̅, and νγ channels can lead to their absorption or energy redistribution, whilst the leptonic and hadronic final states may feed secondary fluxes of neutrinos, protons, and electromagnetic particles through the decay or hadronisation of the heavy leptons, bosons, and quarks produced. We present a framework to characterise these propagation effects in detail, \texttt{νpropa}, an extension of the CRPropa Monte Carlo code that interfaces with event generators and to dedicated computations of the relevant cross sections. It also treats flavour oscillations in vacuum. Using this code, we investigate sources at high redshifts (z = 10), and find a strong absorption of the prompt flux beyond~∼ 10^21 eV, although the copious secondary neutrinos partially compensate this depletion, also contributing to the spectrum at lower energies. The framework is designed to study scenarios of cosmological neutrino production beyond~EeV energies such as superheavy dark matter, cosmic strings, and primordial black holes, and to yield reliable predictions for the forthcoming neutrino observatories.
ER -