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  • Open Access

Does the 220 PeV Event at KM3NeT Point to New Physics?

Vedran Brdar* and Dibya S. Chattopadhyay†

  • *Contact author: vedran.brdar@okstate.edu
  • †Contact author: dibya.chattopadhyay@okstate.edu
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 081001 – Published 23 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/xcnt-trs2

Abstract

The KM3NeT collaboration recently reported the observation of KM3-230213A, a neutrino event with an energy exceeding 100 PeV, more than an order of magnitude higher than the most energetic neutrino in IceCube’s catalog. Given its longer data-taking period and larger effective area relative to KM3NeT, IceCube should have observed events around that energy. This tension has recently been quantified to lie between 2σ and 3.5σ, depending on the neutrino source. A O(100)  PeV neutrino detected at KM3NeT has traversed approximately 147 km of rock and sea en route to the detector, whereas neutrinos arriving from the same location in the sky would have only traveled through about 14 km of ice before reaching IceCube. We use this difference in propagation distance to address the tension between KM3NeT and IceCube. Specifically, we consider a scenario in which the source emits sterile neutrinos that partially convert to active neutrinos through oscillations. We scrutinize two such realizations, one where a new physics matter potential induces a resonance in sterile-to-active transitions and another one where off-diagonal neutrino nonstandard interactions are employed. In both cases, sterile-to-active neutrino oscillations become relevant at length scales of ∼100  km, resulting in increased active neutrino flux near the KM3NeT detector, alleviating the tension between KM3NeT and IceCube. Overall, we propose the exciting possibility that neutrino telescopes may have started detecting new physics.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 081001– Published 23 February, 2026
  • Received 13 March 2025
  • Accepted 28 January 2026
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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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