Preprint
Neutron portal to ultra-high-energy neutrinos
ArXiv.org
Cornell University
03/18/2025
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2503.14419
Abstract
Current data on ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays suggest they are predominantly made of heavy nuclei. This indicates that the flux of neutrinos produced from proton collisions on the
cosmic microwave background is small and hard to observe. Motivated by the recent extremely-high-energy muon event reported by KM3NeT, we explore the possibility of enhancing the energy-flux of cosmogenic neutrinos through nuclear photodisintegration in the presence of new physics. Specifically, we speculate that UHE neutrons may oscillate into a new state, dark (or mirror) neutron n′ that in turn decays injecting large amount of energy to neutrinos, n → n′ → νUHE. While this mechanism does not explain the tension between the KM3NeT event and null results from IceCube, it reconciles the experimental preference for a heavier cosmic ray composition with a large diffuse cosmogenic flux of UHE neutrinos.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Neutron portal to ultra-high-energy neutrinos
- Creators
- Gustavo F. S AlvesMatheus HostertMaxim Pospelov
- Resource Type
- Preprint
- Publication Details
- ArXiv.org
- DOI
- 10.48550/arxiv.2503.14419
- ISSN
- 2331-8422
- Publisher
- Cornell University; Ithaca, New York
- Language
- English
- Date posted
- 03/18/2025
- Academic Unit
- Physics and Astronomy
- Record Identifier
- 9984945910902771
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