Cosmological Implications of High-Energy Neutrino Emission from the Decay of Long-Lived Particle

Abstract

We study cosmological scenarios in which high-energy neutrinos are emitted from the decay of long-lived massive particles at the cosmic time later than a redshift of 10^6. The high-energy neutrino events recently observed by the IceCube experiment suggest a new source of high-energy cosmic-ray neutrinos; decay of a heavy particle can be one of the possibilities. We calculate the spectrum of the high-energy neutrinos emitted from the decay of long-lived particles, taking account of the neutrino scattering processes with background neutrinos. Then, we derive bounds on the scenario using the observation of high-energy cosmic-ray neutrino flux. We also study constraints from the spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background and the big-bang nucleosynthesis. In addition, we show that the PeV neutrinos observed by the IceCube experiment can originate from the decay of a massive particle with its mass as large as O(10^10 GeV).

22 pages, 7 figures

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• Dark matter with two- and many-body decays and supernovae type Ia
• Probing decaying heavy dark matter with the 4-year IceCube HESE data
• Dark Matter interpretation of low energy IceCube MESE excess
• Probing dark matter signals in neutrino telescopes through angular power spectrum
• The Spectrum of Dark Radiation as a Probe of Reheating
• A new physics interpretation of the IceCube data
• Probing superheavy dark matter through lunar radio observations of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos and the impacts of neutrino cascades
• Oscillations of sterile neutrinos from dark matter decay eliminates the IceCube-Fermi tension
• Primordial high energy neutrinos: theoretical/observational constraints and sharp spectral features