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  • Open Access

Searching for hidden sector particles at neutrino telescopes

Sagar Airen* and Zackaria Chacko†

Can Kilic‡ and Ram Purandhar Reddy Sudha§

  • Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA

  • *Contact author: sairen@umd.edu
  • †Contact author: zchacko@umd.edu
  • ‡Contact author: kilic@physics.utexas.edu
  • §Contact author: ramreddy@utexas.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 095044 – Published 24 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n59w-3grm

Abstract

We explore the possibility of directly detecting light, long-lived hidden sector particles at the IceCube neutrino telescope. Such particles frequently arise in nonminimal hidden sectors that couple to the Standard Model through portal operators. We consider two distinct scenarios. In the first scenario, which arises from a neutrino portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced inside the detector by the collision of an energetic neutrino with a nucleon, giving rise to a visible cascade. This new state then decays into a hidden sector daughter, which can naturally be long-lived. The eventual decay of the daughter particle back to Standard Model states gives rise to a second cascade inside the detector. This scenario therefore gives rise to a characteristic “double bang” signal arising from the two distinct cascades. In the second scenario, which arises from a hypercharge portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced outside the detector by the collision of an atmospheric muon with a nucleon. This new state promptly decays into a pair of hidden sector daughters that are long-lived. If both daughters decay into Standard Model states inside the detector, we again obtain a double bang signal from the two distinct cascades. We explore the reach of IceCube for these two scenarios and show that it has the potential to significantly improve the sensitivity to hidden sector models in the mass range from about 1 GeV to about 20 GeV.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 095044– Published 24 November, 2025
  • Received 30 June 2025
  • Accepted 1 November 2025
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