Galactic Center Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray-Dark Matter Interactions
Jorge Terol Calvo, Pedro de la Torre Luque, Mainak Mukhopadhyay, Chris Cappiello, Gonzalo Herrera
hep-ph, astro-ph.HE
Submitted: 2026-07-06
Comments: 15 pages, 8 figures (including Supp. Material)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: The IceCube and ANTARES collaborations have recently reported evidence for high-energy neutrinos associated with the Galactic plane and the Galactic Ridge, offering a new pathway to search for dark
Terminology
Abstract
The IceCube and ANTARES collaborations have recently reported evidence for high-energy neutrinos associated with the Galactic plane and the Galactic Ridge, offering a new pathway to search for dark matter (DM). Deep inelastic scattering of cosmic rays with sub-GeV DM in the Galactic halo produces a distinctive neutrino signature from meson decays. Using detailed Galactic cosmic-ray maps and ANTARES observations, we derive 99% C.L. upper limits on the DM-nucleon cross section that extend down to keV-scale masses. These results establish Galactic neutrino telescopes as a powerful, complementary probe of light DM, with substantial improvements expected from upcoming IceCube-Gen2 and KM3NeT observations.
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