Probing the Local Dark Matter Halo with Neutrino Oscillations

Abstract

Dark matter particles can form halos gravitationally bound to massive astrophysical objects. The Earth could have such a halo where depending on the particle mass, the halo either extends beyond the surface or is confined to the Earth's interior. We consider the possibility that if dark matter particles are coupled to neutrinos, then neutrino oscillations can be used to probe the Earth's dark matter halo. In particular, atmospheric neutrinos traversing the Earth can be sensitive to a small size, interior halo, inaccessible by other means. Depending on the halo mass and neutrino energy, constraints on the dark matter-neutrino couplings are obtained from the halo corrections to the neutrino oscillations.

14 pages, 13 figures. v2: version published in PRD

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• Neutrino Lorentz invariance violation from the CPT-even SME coefficients through a tensor interaction with cosmological scalar fields
• Cosmogenic neutrinos as probes of new physics
• Probing the quantum speed limit and entanglement in flavor oscillations of neutrino-antineutrino system in curved spacetime
• Constraining the isotropic CPT-odd coefficients of the Standard Model Extension by a combined DUNE and ESSnuSB analysis
• Probing Bosonic Overdensities with Optomechanical Sensing