English

The Dark Matter Diffused Supernova Neutrino Background

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-01-08 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider neutrinos scattering off Milky Way dark matter and the impact of this scattering on supernovae neutrinos. This can take the form of attenuation on the initial flux of neutrinos and a time-delayed flux of scattered neutrinos. Considering dark matter masses above 100 MeV and past Milky Way supernovae, we find this time-delayed flux is nearly constant in time. We call this flux the Dark Matter Diffused Supernova Neutrino Background (DMDSNB), and use Super-K limits on the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB) flux to set limits on the dark matter-neutrino scattering cross section. We find σDMν/mDM2.4×1024cm2\sigma_{\rm DM-\nu}/m_{\rm DM} \lesssim 2.4 \times 10^{-24} \mathrm{cm^2}/GeV for mDM1m_{\rm DM} \gtrsim 1 GeV, which is the strongest bound to date on dark matter-neutrino scatterings at MeV energies, and stronger than bounds set from SN1987A neutrino attenuation by an order of magnitude. We end by discussing how the DMDSNB could be distinguished from the DSNB.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.03882,
  title  = {The Dark Matter Diffused Supernova Neutrino Background},
  author = {Garv Chauhan and R. Andrew Gustafson and Gonzalo Herrera and Taj Johnson and Ian Shoemaker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.03882},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 8 figures (Figure 6 in Appendix A is correct here, incorrect units in JCAP version)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:23:33.741Z