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Dark-matter-enhanced probe of relic neutrino clustering

Writasree Maitra1,*, Anna M. Suliga2,†, Vedran Brdar3,‡, and P. S. Bhupal Dev1,4,5,§

  • *Contact author: m.writasree@wustl.edu
  • †Contact author: a.suliga@nyu.edu
  • ‡Contact author: vedran.brdar@okstate.edu
  • §Contact author: bdev@wustl.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 043051 – Published 23 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yq8b-cmmz

Abstract

We propose heavy decaying dark matter (DM) as a new probe of the cosmic neutrino background (CνB). Heavy DM, with mass ≳109  GeV, decaying into neutrinos can be a new source of ultrahigh-energy (UHE) neutrinos. Including this contribution along with the measured astrophysical and predicted cosmogenic neutrino fluxes, we study the scattering of UHE neutrinos with the CνB via standard weak interactions mediated by the Z boson. We solve the complete neutrino transport equation, taking into account both absorption and reinjection effects, to calculate the expected spectrum of UHE neutrino flux at future neutrino telescopes, such as the IceCube-Gen2 radio. We argue that such observations can be used to probe the CνB properties and, in particular, local CνB clustering. We find that, depending on the absolute neutrino mass and the DM mass and lifetime, a local CνB overdensity ≳106 can be probed at the IceCube-Gen2 radio within ten years of data taking.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 043051– Published 23 February, 2026
  • Received 8 September 2025
  • Accepted 22 January 2026
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