- 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
  • Open Access

What KM3-230213A event may tell us about the neutrino mass and dark matter

Basabendu Barman1,*, Arindam Das2,3,†, and Prantik Sarmah4,‡

  • *Contact author: basabendu.b@srmap.edu.in
  • †Contact author: arindamdas@oia.hokudai.ac.jp
  • ‡Contact author: prantiksarmah@ihep.ac.cn
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 112, 075014 – Published 6 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/t58k-sjq5

Abstract

Within the general U(1) scenario, we demonstrate that the ultrahigh-energy neutrinos recently detected by KM3NeT could originate from a decaying right-handed neutrino dark matter, with a mass of 440 PeV. Considering dark matter production via freeze-in, we delineate the parameter space that satisfies the observed relic abundance and also lies within the reach of multiple gravitational wave detectors. Our study provides a testable new physics scenario, enabled by multimessenger astronomy.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (94)

  1. S. Aiello et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), Observation of an ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrino with KM3NeT, Nature (London) 638, 376 (2025).
  2. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT, MessMapp Group, Fermi-LAT, Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40-m Telescope Group, SVOM Collaborations), Characterising candidate blazar counterparts of the ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, arXiv:2502.08484.
  3. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), On the potential galactic origin of the ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, arXiv:2502.08387.
  4. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), On the potential cosmogenic origin of the ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, Astrophys. J. Lett. 984, L41 (2025).
  5. K. Greisen, End to the cosmic ray spectrum?, Phys. Rev. Lett. 16, 748 (1966).
  6. G. T. Zatsepin and V. A. Kuzmin, Upper limit of the spectrum of cosmic rays, JETP Lett. 4, 78 (1966).
  7. G. Gelmini, O. E. Kalashev, and D. V. Semikoz, GZK photons as ultra high energy cosmic rays, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 106, 1061 (2008).
  8. R. Aloisio, D. Boncioli, A. di Matteo, A. F. Grillo, S. Petrera, and F. Salamida, Cosmogenic neutrinos and ultra-high energy cosmic ray models, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 10 (2015) 006.
  9. G. B. Gelmini, O. Kalashev, and D. Semikoz, Upper limit on the diffuse radio background from GZK photon observation, Universe 8, 402 (2022).
  10. S. Chakraborty, P. Mehta, and P. Sarmah, A relook at the GZK neutrino-photon connection: impact of extra-galactic radio background & UHECR properties, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 01 (2024) 058.
  11. S. W. Li, P. Machado, D. Naredo-Tuero, and T. Schwemberger, Clash of the Titans: Ultra-high energy KM3NeT event versus IceCube data, arXiv:2502.04508.
  12. O. Adriani et al. (KM3NeT Collaboration), The ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A within the global neutrino landscape, Phys. Rev. X 15, 031016 (2025).
  13. B. Barman, A. Das, S. Jyoti Das, and M. Merchand, Hunting for heavy Z′ with IceCube neutrinos and gravitational waves, Phys. Rev. D 112, 035035 (2025).
  14. A. Boccia and F. Iocco, A strike of luck: Could the KM3-230213A event be caused by an evaporating primordial black hole?, arXiv:2502.19245.
  15. D. Borah, N. Das, N. Okada, and P. Sarmah, Possible origin of the KM3-230213A neutrino event from dark matter decay, Phys. Rev. D 111, 123022 (2025).
  16. V. Brdar and D. S. Chattopadhyay, Does the 220 PeV event at KM3NeT point to new physics?, arXiv:2502.21299.
  17. K. Kohri, P. K. Paul, and N. Sahu, Super heavy dark matter origin of the PeV neutrino event: KM3-230213A, Phys. Rev. D 112, L031703 (2025).
  18. Y. Narita and W. Yin, Explaining the KM3-230213A detection without gamma-ray emission: Cosmic-ray dark radiation, arXiv:2503.07776.
  19. S. Jiang and F. P. Huang, Pseudo-goldstone dark matter from primordial black holes: Gravitational wave signatures and implications for KM3-230213A event at KM3NeT, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 06 (2025) 023.
  20. G. F. S. Alves, M. Hostert, and M. Pospelov, Neutron portal to ultra-high-energy neutrinos, arXiv:2503.14419.
  21. R. Wang and B.-Q. Ma, Association of 220 PeV neutrino KM3-230213A with gamma-ray bursts, Res. Notes AAS 9, 65 (2025).
  22. Y.-M. Yang, X.-J. Lv, X.-J. Bi, and P.-F. Yin, Constraints on Lorentz invariance violation in neutrino sector from the ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, Phys. Rev. D 111, 123037 (2025).
  23. K. Fang, F. Halzen, and D. Hooper, Cascaded gamma-ray emission associated with the KM3NeT ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A, Astrophys. J. Lett. 982, L16 (2025).
  24. P. Satunin, Ultra-high-energy event KM3-230213A constraints on Lorentz invariance violation in neutrino sector, Eur. Phys. J. C 85, 545 (2025).
  25. T. A. Dzhatdoev, The blazar PKS 0605-085 as the origin of the KM3-230213A ultra high energy neutrino event, arXiv:2502.11434.
  26. A. Neronov, F. Oikonomou, and D. Semikoz, KM3-230213A: An ultra-high energy neutrino from a year-long astrophysical transient, arXiv:2502.12986.
  27. G. Amelino-Camelia, G. D’Amico, G. Fabiano, D. Frattulillo, G. Gubitosi, A. Moia, and G. Rosati, On testing in-vacuo dispersion with the most energetic neutrinos: KM3-230213A case study, Phys. Lett. B 868, 139764 (2025).
  28. M. Crnogorčević, C. Blanco, and T. Linden, Looking for the γ-ray cascades of the KM3-230213A neutrino source, arXiv:2503.16606.
  29. Y. Jho, S. C. Park, and C. S. Shin, Superheavy supersymmetric dark matter for the origin of KM3NeT ultra-high energy signal, arXiv:2503.18737.
  30. A. P. Klipfel and D. I. Kaiser, Ultra-high-energy neutrinos from primordial black holes, arXiv:2503.19227.
  31. K.-Y. Choi, E. Lkhagvadorj, and S. Mahapatra, Cosmological origin of the KM3-230213A event and associated gravitational waves, arXiv:2503.22465.
  32. A. Das, N. Okada, and D. Raut, Enhanced pair production of heavy Majorana neutrinos at the LHC, Phys. Rev. D 97, 115023 (2018).
  33. S. K. A., A. Das, G. Lambiase, T. Nomura, and Y. Orikasa, Probing chiral and flavored Z′ from cosmic bursts through neutrino interactions, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 1224 (2024).
  34. P. Minkowski, μ→eγ at a rate of one out of 109 muon decays?, Phys. Lett. 67B, 421 (1977).
  35. T. Yanagida, Horizontal gauge symmetry and masses of neutrinos, Conf. Proc. C 7902131, 95 (1979).
  36. M. Gell-Mann, P. Ramond, and R. Slansky, Complex spinors and unified theories, Conf. Proc. C 790927, 315 (1979).
  37. R. N. Mohapatra and G. Senjanovic, Neutrino mass and spontaneous parity nonconservation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 44, 912 (1980).
  38. J. Schechter and J. W. F. Valle, Neutrino masses in SU(2)×U(1) theories, Phys. Rev. D 22, 2227 (1980).
  39. Proceedings: Workshop on the Unified Theories and the Baryon Number in the Universe: Tsukuba, Japan, 1979, edited by O. Sawada and A. Sugamoto (National Laboratory for High Energy Physics, Tsukuba, Japan, 1979).
  40. R. N. Mohapatra and G. Senjanovic, Neutrino masses and mixings in gauge models with spontaneous parity violation, Phys. Rev. D 23, 165 (1981).
  41. S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group Collaboration), Review of particle physics, Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024).
  42. L. J. Hall, K. Jedamzik, J. March-Russell, and S. M. West, Freeze-in production of FIMP dark matter, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2010) 080.
  43. L. Boyle, K. Finn, and N. Turok, CPT-symmetric universe, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 251301 (2018).
  44. H. B. Nielsen and P. Olesen, Vortex line models for dual strings, Nucl. Phys. B61, 45 (1973).
  45. T. W. B. Kibble, Topology of cosmic domains and strings, J. Phys. A 9, 1387 (1976).
  46. A. Babul, T. Piran, and D. N. Spergel, Bosonic superconducting cosmic strings. 1. Classical field theory solutions, Phys. Lett. B 202, 307 (1988).
  47. A. Vilenkin and E. P. S. Shellard, Cosmic Strings and Other Topological Defects (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2000), 7.
  48. J. A. Dror, T. Hiramatsu, K. Kohri, H. Murayama, and G. White, Testing the seesaw mechanism and leptogenesis with gravitational waves, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 041804 (2020).
  49. A. Das, P. Konar, and S. Majhi, Production of heavy neutrino in next-to-leading order QCD at the LHC and beyond, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2016) 019.
  50. J. F. Navarro, C. S. Frenk, and S. D. M. White, A universal density profile from hierarchical clustering, Astrophys. J. 490, 493 (1997).
  51. J. F. Navarro, E. Hayashi, C. Power, A. Jenkins, C. S. Frenk, S. D. M. White, V. Springel, J. Stadel, and T. R. Quinn, The Inner structure of Lambda-CDM halos 3: Universality and asymptotic slopes, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 349, 1039 (2004).
  52. J. Einasto and U. Haud, Galactic models with massive corona. I—Method. II—Galaxy, Astron. Astrophys. 223, 89 (1989).
  53. A. W. Graham, D. Merritt, B. Moore, J. Diemand, and B. Terzic, Empirical models for dark matter halos. I. Nonparametric construction of density profiles and comparison with parametric models, Astron. J. 132, 2685 (2006).
  54. A. Burkert, The structure of dark matter halos in dwarf galaxies, Astrophys. J. Lett. 447, L25 (1995).
  55. F. W. Stecker, S. T. Scully, and M. A. Malkan, An empirical determination of the intergalactic background light from UV to FIR wavelengths using FIR deep galaxy surveys and the gamma-ray opacity of the universe, Astrophys. J. 827, 6 (2016); 863, 112(E) (2018).
  56. C. W. Bauer, N. L. Rodd, and B. R. Webber, Dark matter spectra from the electroweak to the Planck scale, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2021) 121.
  57. Z. Cao et al. (LHAASO Collaboration), Measurement of ultra-high-energy diffuse gamma-ray emission of the galactic plane from 10 TeV to 1 PeV with LHAASO-KM2A, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 151001 (2023).
  58. Y. A. Fomin, N. N. Kalmykov, I. S. Karpikov, G. V. Kulikov, M. Y. Kuznetsov, G. I. Rubtsov, V. P. Sulakov, and S. V. Troitsky, Constraints on the flux of ∼(1016–1017.5)  eV cosmic photons from the EAS-MSU muon data, Phys. Rev. D 95, 123011 (2017).
  59. A. Castellina (Pierre Auger Collaboration), Highlights from the Pierre Auger Observatory, Proc. Sci., ICRC2019 (2021) 004 [arXiv:1909.10791].
  60. H. Athar, M. Jezabek, and O. Yasuda, Effects of neutrino mixing on high-energy cosmic neutrino flux, Phys. Rev. D 62, 103007 (2000).
  61. R. Abbasi et al. (IceCube Collaboration), The IceCube high-energy starting event sample: Description and flux characterization with 7.5 years of data, Phys. Rev. D 104, 022002 (2021).
  62. M. G. Aartsen et al. (IceCube Collaboration), Differential limit on the extremely-high-energy cosmic neutrino flux in the presence of astrophysical background from nine years of IceCube data, Phys. Rev. D 98, 062003 (2018).
  63. KM3NeT Collaboration, KM3NeT Official Website (2025), https://www.km3net.org/ (accessed: 2025-04-01).
  64. K. Kaneta, Z. Kang, and H.-S. Lee, Right-handed neutrino dark matter under the B−−L gauge interaction, J. High Energy Phys. 02 (2017) 031.
  65. S. Eijima, O. Seto, and T. Shimomura, Revisiting sterile neutrino dark matter in gauged U(1)B-L model, Phys. Rev. D 106, 103513 (2022).
  66. O. Seto, T. Shimomura, and Y. Uchida, Freeze-in sterile neutrino dark matter in feeble gauged B−L model, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2025) 147.
  67. R. L. Workman et al. (Particle Data Group Collaboration), Review of particle physics, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2022, 083C01 (2022).
  68. N. Aghanim et al. (Planck Collaboration), Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters, Astron. Astrophys. 641, A6 (2020); 652, C4(E) (2021).
  69. C. Ringeval, M. Sakellariadou, and F. Bouchet, Cosmological evolution of cosmic string loops, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 02 (2007) 023.
  70. J. J. Blanco-Pillado, K. D. Olum, and B. Shlaer, Large parallel cosmic string simulations: New results on loop production, Phys. Rev. D 83, 083514 (2011).
  71. A. Vilenkin, Gravitational radiation from cosmic strings, Phys. Lett. 107B, 47 (1981).
  72. T. Vachaspati and A. Vilenkin, Gravitational radiation from cosmic strings, Phys. Rev. D 31, 3052 (1985).
  73. J. J. Blanco-Pillado, K. D. Olum, and B. Shlaer, The number of cosmic string loops, Phys. Rev. D 89, 023512 (2014).
  74. J. J. Blanco-Pillado and K. D. Olum, Stochastic gravitational wave background from smoothed cosmic string loops, Phys. Rev. D 96, 104046 (2017).
  75. C. J. A. P. Martins and E. P. S. Shellard, Quantitative string evolution, Phys. Rev. D 54, 2535 (1996).
  76. C. J. A. P. Martins and E. P. S. Shellard, Extending the velocity dependent one scale string evolution model, Phys. Rev. D 65, 043514 (2002).
  77. P. Auclair et al., Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 04 (2020) 034.
  78. T. Damour and A. Vilenkin, Gravitational wave bursts from cusps and kinks on cosmic strings, Phys. Rev. D 64, 064008 (2001).
  79. Y. Gouttenoire, G. Servant, and P. Simakachorn, Beyond the standard models with cosmic strings, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2020) 032.
  80. A. Vilenkin, Cosmic string dynamics with friction, Phys. Rev. D 43, 1060 (1991).
  81. J. Crowder and N. J. Cornish, Beyond LISA: Exploring future gravitational wave missions, Phys. Rev. D 72, 083005 (2005).
  82. V. Corbin and N. J. Cornish, Detecting the cosmic gravitational wave background with the big bang observer, Classical Quantum Gravity 23, 2435 (2006).
  83. N. Seto, S. Kawamura, and T. Nakamura, Possibility of direct measurement of the acceleration of the universe using 0.1-Hz band laser interferometer gravitational wave antenna in space, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 221103 (2001).
  84. H. Kudoh, A. Taruya, T. Hiramatsu, and Y. Himemoto, Detecting a gravitational-wave background with next-generation space interferometers, Phys. Rev. D 73, 064006 (2006).
  85. P. Amaro-Seoane et al. (LISA Collaboration), Laser interferometer space antenna, arXiv:1702.00786.
  86. D. Reitze et al., Cosmic explorer: The U.S. Contribution to gravitational-wave astronomy beyond LIGO, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 51, 035 (2019).
  87. S. Hild et al., Sensitivity studies for third-generation gravitational wave observatories, Classical Quantum Gravity 28, 094013 (2011).
  88. M. Punturo et al., The Einstein Telescope: A third-generation gravitational wave observatory, Classical Quantum Gravity 27, 194002 (2010).
  89. B. Sathyaprakash et al., Scientific objectives of Einstein telescope, Classical Quantum Gravity 29, 124013 (2012); 30, 079501(E) (2013).
  90. M. Maggiore et al., Science case for the Einstein telescope, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 03 (2020) 050.
  91. T. Charnock, A. Avgoustidis, E. J. Copeland, and A. Moss, CMB constraints on cosmic strings and superstrings, Phys. Rev. D 93, 123503 (2016).
  92. A. Afzal et al. (NANOGrav Collaboration), The NANOGrav 15 yr data set: Search for signals from new physics, Astrophys. J. Lett. 951, L11 (2023); 971, L27(E) (2024).
  93. A. Esmaili, S. K. Kang, and P. D. Serpico, IceCube events and decaying dark matter: Hints and constraints, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 12 (2014) 054.
  94. T. Higaki, R. Kitano, and R. Sato, Neutrinoful universe, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2014) 044.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 112, 075014– Published 6 October, 2025
  • Received 13 April 2025
  • Accepted 10 September 2025
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