Searching for Hidden Sector Particles at Neutrino Telescopes

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Airen, Sagar, Chacko, Zackaria, Kilic, Can, Sudha, Ram Purandhar Reddy
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Airen, Sagar
Chacko, Zackaria
Kilic, Can
Sudha, Ram Purandhar Reddy
author_facet Airen, Sagar
Chacko, Zackaria
Kilic, Can
Sudha, Ram Purandhar Reddy
contents We explore the possibility of directly detecting light, long-lived hidden sector particles at the IceCube neutrino telescope. Such particles frequently arise in non-minimal hidden sectors that couple to the Standard Model through portal operators. We consider two distinct scenarios. In the first scenario, which arises from a neutrino portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced inside the detector by the collision of an energetic neutrino with a nucleon, giving rise to a visible cascade. This new state then decays into a hidden sector daughter, which can naturally be long-lived. The eventual decay of the daughter particle back to Standard Model states gives rise to a second cascade inside the detector. This scenario therefore gives rise to a characteristic "double bang" signal arising from the two distinct cascades. In the second scenario, which arises from a hypercharge portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced outside the detector by the collision of an atmospheric muon with a nucleon. This new state promptly decays into a pair of hidden sector daughters that are long-lived. If both daughters decay into Standard Model states inside the detector, we again obtain a double-bang signal from the two distinct cascades. We explore the reach of IceCube for these two scenarios and show that it has the potential to significantly improve the sensitivity to hidden sector models in the mass range from about a GeV to about 20 GeV.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_05326
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Searching for Hidden Sector Particles at Neutrino Telescopes
Airen, Sagar
Chacko, Zackaria
Kilic, Can
Sudha, Ram Purandhar Reddy
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Experiment
We explore the possibility of directly detecting light, long-lived hidden sector particles at the IceCube neutrino telescope. Such particles frequently arise in non-minimal hidden sectors that couple to the Standard Model through portal operators. We consider two distinct scenarios. In the first scenario, which arises from a neutrino portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced inside the detector by the collision of an energetic neutrino with a nucleon, giving rise to a visible cascade. This new state then decays into a hidden sector daughter, which can naturally be long-lived. The eventual decay of the daughter particle back to Standard Model states gives rise to a second cascade inside the detector. This scenario therefore gives rise to a characteristic "double bang" signal arising from the two distinct cascades. In the second scenario, which arises from a hypercharge portal interaction, a hidden sector particle is produced outside the detector by the collision of an atmospheric muon with a nucleon. This new state promptly decays into a pair of hidden sector daughters that are long-lived. If both daughters decay into Standard Model states inside the detector, we again obtain a double-bang signal from the two distinct cascades. We explore the reach of IceCube for these two scenarios and show that it has the potential to significantly improve the sensitivity to hidden sector models in the mass range from about a GeV to about 20 GeV.
title Searching for Hidden Sector Particles at Neutrino Telescopes
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Experiment
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05326