- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Constraining the neutrino-nucleon cross section with the ultrahigh-energy KM3NeT event

Toni Bertólez-Martínez* and Dan Hooper†

  • Department of Physics, Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

  • *Contact author: bertolezmart@wisc.edu
  • †Contact author: dwhooper@wisc.edu
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 114, L091701 – Published 9 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pmx2-vzyw

Abstract

KM3NeT’s detection of a muon track produced by a ∼220  PeV neutrino provides an opportunity to probe physics at center-of-momentum energies greater than those probed by the LHC or other existing particle accelerators. In this study, we use this single event to place an upper limit on the neutrino-nucleon cross section of σνN<26σνNSM at ECM∼20  TeV. This result can be used to constrain a variety of scenarios beyond the Standard Model. With future very large volume neutrino telescopes, constraints on the neutrino-nucleon scattering cross section are expected to become substantially more stringent and, in some scenarios, could become competitive with accelerator probes of new physics.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (67)

  1. S. Aiello et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), Observation of an ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrino with KM3NeT, Nature (London) 638, 376 (2025); 640, E3 (2025).
  2. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), On the potential galactic origin of the ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, Astrophys. J. 1003, 157 (2026).
  3. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), Ultrahigh-energy event KM3-230213A within the global neutrino landscape, Phys. Rev. X 15, 031016 (2025).
  4. S. W. Li, P. Machado, D. Naredo-Tuero, and T. Schwemberger, Clash of the titans: Ultra-high energy KM3NeT event versus IceCube data, Phys. Lett. B 875, 140293 (2026).
  5. K. Fang, F. Halzen, and D. Hooper, Cascaded gamma-ray emission associated with the KM3NeT ultrahigh-energy event KM3-230213A, Astrophys. J. Lett. 982, L16 (2025).
  6. A. Kusenko and T. J. Weiler, Neutrino cross-sections at high-energies and the future observations of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 161101 (2002).
  7. D. Hooper, Measuring high-energy neutrino nucleon cross-sections with future neutrino telescopes, Phys. Rev. D 65, 097303 (2002).
  8. L. A. Anchordoqui, J. L. Feng, and H. Goldberg, Particle physics on ice: Constraints on neutrino interactions far above the weak scale, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 021101 (2006).
  9. E. Borriello, A. Cuoco, G. Mangano, G. Miele, S. Pastor, O. Pisanti, and P. D. Serpico, Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with a km3 neutrino telescope, Phys. Rev. D 77, 045019 (2008).
  10. R. Abbasi et al. (IceCube Collaboration), Measurement of the high-energy all-flavor neutrino-nucleon cross section with IceCube, Phys. Rev. D 104, 022001 (2021).
  11. M. G. Aartsen et al. (IceCube Collaboration), Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino cross section with IceCube using earth absorption, Nature (London) 551, 596 (2017).
  12. M. Bustamante and A. Connolly, Extracting the energy-dependent neutrino-nucleon cross section above 10 TeV using IceCube showers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 041101 (2019).
  13. S. R. Klein, Probing high-energy interactions of atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos, in Probing Particle Physics with Neutrino Telescopes (World Scientific, Singapore, 2020).
  14. P. B. Denton and Y. Kini, Ultra-high-energy tau neutrino cross sections with GRAND and POEMMA, Phys. Rev. D 102, 123019 (2020).
  15. G.-y. Huang, S. Jana, M. Lindner, and W. Rodejohann, Probing new physics at future tau neutrino telescopes, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 02 (2021) 038.
  16. V. B. Valera, M. Bustamante, and C. Glaser, The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: Measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2022) 105.
  17. B. Zhou and J. F. Beacom, W-boson and TRIDENT production in TeV–PeV neutrino observatories, Phys. Rev. D 101, 036010 (2020).
  18. P. Jain, D. W. McKay, S. Panda, and J. P. Ralston, Extra dimensions and strong neutrino nucleon interactions above 10**19-eV: Breaking the GZK barrier, Phys. Lett. B 484, 267 (2000).
  19. J. Alvarez-Muniz, F. Halzen, T. Han, and D. Hooper, Phenomenology of high-energy neutrinos in low scale quantum gravity models, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 021301 (2002).
  20. J. Alvarez-Muniz, J. L. Feng, F. Halzen, T. Han, and D. Hooper, Detecting microscopic black holes with neutrino telescopes, Phys. Rev. D 65, 124015 (2002).
  21. P. Jain, S. Kar, D. W. McKay, S. Panda, and J. P. Ralston, Angular dependence of neutrino flux in KM**3 detectors in low scale gravity models, Phys. Rev. D 66, 065018 (2002).
  22. L. A. Anchordoqui, J. L. Feng, H. Goldberg, and A. D. Shapere, Neutrino bounds on astrophysical sources and new physics, Phys. Rev. D 66, 103002 (2002).
  23. L. A. Anchordoqui, J. L. Feng, H. Goldberg, and A. D. Shapere, Updated limits on TeV scale gravity from absence of neutrino cosmic ray showers mediated by black holes, Phys. Rev. D 68, 104025 (2003).
  24. A. Ringwald and H. Tu, Collider versus cosmic ray sensitivity to black hole production, Phys. Lett. B 525, 135 (2002).
  25. J. I. Illana, M. Masip, and D. Meloni, Cosmogenic neutrinos and signals of TeV gravity in air showers and neutrino telescopes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 151102 (2004).
  26. L. A. Anchordoqui, C. A. Garcia Canal, H. Goldberg, D. Gomez Dumm, and F. Halzen, Probing leptoquark production at IceCube, Phys. Rev. D 74, 125021 (2006).
  27. U. K. Dey and S. Mohanty, Constraints on leptoquark models from IceCube data, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2015) 187.
  28. B. Dutta, Y. Gao, T. Li, C. Rott, and L. E. Strigari, Leptoquark implication from the CMS and IceCube experiments, Phys. Rev. D 91, 125015 (2015).
  29. D. Bečirević, B. Panes, O. Sumensari, and R. Zukanovich Funchal, Seeking leptoquarks in IceCube, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2018) 032.
  30. B. Chauhan, B. Kindra, and A. Narang, Discrepancies in simultaneous explanation of flavor anomalies and IceCube PeV events using leptoquarks, Phys. Rev. D 97, 095007 (2018).
  31. N. Mileo, A. de la Puente, and A. Szynkman, Implications of a electroweak triplet scalar leptoquark on the ultra-high energy neutrino events at IceCube, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2016) 124.
  32. U. K. Dey, S. Mohanty, and G. Tomar, Leptoquarks: 750 GeV diphoton resonance and IceCube events, arXiv:1606.07903.
  33. M. Kirk, S. Okawa, and K. Wu, A ν window onto leptoquarks?, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2023) 093.
  34. I. Romero and O. A. Sampayo, Leptoquarks signals in KM**3 neutrino telescopes, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2009) 111.
  35. Y. Bai, K. Xie, and B. Zhou, Large neutrino “Collider”, arXiv:2510.13948.
  36. F. Cornet, J. I. Illana, and M. Masip, TeV strings and the neutrino nucleon cross-section at ultrahigh-energies, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 4235 (2001).
  37. J. J. Friess, T. Han, andD. Hooper, TeV string state excitation via high-energy cosmic neutrinos, Phys. Lett. B 547, 31 (2002).
  38. M. Carena, D. Choudhury, S. Lola, and C. Quigg, Manifestations of R-parity violation in ultrahigh-energy neutrino interactions, Phys. Rev. D 58, 095003 (1998).
  39. S. Pandey, S. Karmakar, and S. Rakshit, Strong constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions: LHC vs IceCube, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2019) 046.
  40. T. Han and D. Hooper, Effects of electroweak instantons in high-energy neutrino telescopes, Phys. Lett. B 582, 21 (2004).
  41. J. Ellis, K. Sakurai, and M. Spannowsky, Search for sphalerons: IceCube vs LHC, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2016) 085.
  42. D. A. Morris and A. Ringwald, Cosmic ray signatures of multi—W processes, Astropart. Phys. 2, 43 (1994).
  43. Z. Fodor, S. D. Katz, A. Ringwald, and H. Tu, Electroweak instantons as a solution to the ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray puzzle, Phys. Lett. B 561, 191 (2003).
  44. T. Han and D. Hooper, The particle physics reach of high-energy neutrino astronomy, New J. Phys. 6, 150 (2004).
  45. V. Bertone, R. Gauld, and J. Rojo, Neutrino telescopes as QCD microscopes, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2018) 217.
  46. R. Gandhi, C. Quigg, M. H. Reno, and I. Sarcevic, Ultrahigh-energy neutrino interactions, Astropart. Phys. 5, 81 (1996).
  47. S. I. Dutta, M. H. Reno, I. Sarcevic, and D. Seckel, Propagation of muons and taus at high-energies, Phys. Rev. D 63, 094020 (2001).
  48. J.-H. Koehne, K. Frantzen, M. Schmitz, T. Fuchs, W. Rhode, D. Chirkin, and J. B. Tjus, Proposal: A tool for propagation of charged leptons, Comput. Phys. Commun. 184, 2070 (2013).
  49. I. Safa, J. Lazar, A. Pizzuto, O. Vasquez, C. A. Argüelles, and J. Vandenbroucke, taurunner: A public python program to propagate neutral and charged leptons, Comput. Phys. Commun. 278, 108422 (2022).
  50. A. Cooper-Sarkar, P. Mertsch, and S. Sarkar, The high energy neutrino cross-section in the standard model and its uncertainty, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2011) 042.
  51. P. L. R. Weigel, J. M. Conrad, and A. Garcia-Soto, Cross sections and inelasticity distributions of high-energy neutrino deep inelastic scattering, Phys. Rev. D 111, 043044 (2025).
  52. D. Seckel, Neutrino photon reactions in astrophysics and cosmology, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 900 (1998).
  53. B. Zhou and J. F. Beacom, Neutrino-nucleus cross sections for W-boson and TRIDENT production, Phys. Rev. D 101, 036011 (2020).
  54. A. M. Dziewonski and D. L. Anderson, Preliminary reference earth model, Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors 25, 297 (1981).
  55. I. Esteban, S. Prohira, and J. F. Beacom, Detector requirements for model-independent measurements of ultrahigh energy neutrino cross sections, Phys. Rev. D 106, 023021 (2022).
  56. M. G. Aartsen et al. (IceCube-Gen2 Collaboration), IceCube-Gen2: The window to the extreme universe, J. Phys. G 48, 060501 (2021).
  57. M. Agostini et al. (P-ONE Collaboration), The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment, Nat. Astron. 4, 913 (2020).
  58. Z. P. Ye et al. (TRIDENT Collaboration), A multi-cubic-kilometre neutrino telescope in the western pacific ocean, Nat. Astron. 7, 1497 (2023).
  59. T.-Q. Huang, Z. Cao, M. Chen, J. Liu, Z. Wang, X. You, and Y. Qi, Proposal for the high energy neutrino telescope, Proc. Sci. ICRC2023 (2023) 1080.
  60. J. Álvarez-Muñiz et al. (GRAND Collaboration), The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and design, Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 63, 219501 (2020).
  61. S. Wissel et al., Prospects for high-elevation radio detection of >100  PeV tau neutrinos, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2020) 065.
  62. A. Romero-Wolf et al., An Andean deep-valley detector for high-energy tau neutrinos, in Latin American Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructure (2020), arXiv:2002.06475.
  63. A. Brown, M. Bagheri, M. Doro, E. Gazda, D. Kieda, C. Lin, N. Otte, I. Taboada, and A. Wang, Trinity: An imaging air cherenkov telescope to search for ultra-high-energy neutrinos., Proc. Sci., ICRC2021 (2021) 1179.
  64. S. Prohira et al., Observation of radar echoes from high-energy particle cascades, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 091101 (2020).
  65. M. Fabbrichesi, and A. Urbano (POEMMA Collaboration), The POEMMA (Probe of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics) observatory, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 06 (2020) 007.
  66. M. Ackermann et al., High-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos: A snowmass white paper, J. High Energy Astrophys. 36, 55 (2022).
  67. https://github.com/tbertolez/km3net_nuxs.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 114, L091701– Published 9 November, 2026
  • Received 7 April 2026
  • Accepted 22 September 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation