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  • Open Access

Testing the Dark Origin of Neutrino Masses with Oscillation Experiments

Andrew Cheek1,*, Luca Visinelli2,3,†, and Hong-Yi Zhang1,‡

  • *Contact author: acheek@sjtu.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: lvisinelli@unisa.it
  • ‡Contact author: hongyi18@sjtu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 031801 – Published 16 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wyns-m4y5

Abstract

The origin of neutrino masses remains unknown to date. One popular idea involves interactions between neutrinos and ultralight dark matter, described as fields or particles with masses mϕ≪10  eV. Due to the large phase-space number density, this type of dark matter exists in coherent states and can be effectively described by an oscillating classical field. As a result, neutrino mass-squared differences undergo field-induced interference in spacetime, potentially generating detectable effects in oscillation experiments. We demonstrate that if mϕ≫10−14  eV, the mechanism becomes sensitive to dark matter density fluctuations, which suppresses the oscillatory behavior of flavor-changing probabilities as a function of neutrino propagation distance in a model-independent way, thereby ruling out this regime. Furthermore, by analyzing data from the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND), a benchmark long-baseline reactor experiment, we show that the hypothesis of a dark origin for the neutrino masses is disfavored for mϕ≪10−14  eV, compared to the case of constant mass values in vacuum. This result holds at more than the 4σ level across different datasets and parameter choices. The mass range 10−17  eV≲mϕ≲10−14  eV can be further tested in current and future oscillation experiments by searching for time variations (rather than periodicity) in oscillation parameters.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 031801– Published 16 July, 2025
  • Received 14 March 2025
  • Accepted 30 June 2025
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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.

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