Are IceCube neutrinos unveiling PeV-scale decaying dark matter?

TL;DR

This paper explores the hypothesis that PeV-scale decaying dark matter could explain IceCube's observed neutrino events, highlighting distinctive spectral and anisotropic signatures that match current data and proposing future tests.

Contribution

It introduces the decaying dark matter scenario as an alternative explanation for IceCube neutrino observations, emphasizing its unique spectral and anisotropic features.

Findings

Good match between the decaying dark matter model and IceCube data

Distinctive energy spectrum distortion from astrophysical sources

Potential anisotropies consistent with dark matter decay signatures

Abstract

Recent observations by IceCube, notably two PeV cascades accompanied by events at energies ~ (30-400) TeV, are clearly in excess over atmospheric background fluxes and beg for an astroparticle physics explanation. Although some models of astrophysical accelerators can account for the observations within current statistics, intriguing features in the energy and possibly angular distributions of the events make worth exploring alternatives. Here, we entertain the possibility of interpreting the data with a few PeV mass scale decaying Dark Matter, with lifetime of the order of 10^27 s. We discuss generic signatures of this scenario, including its unique energy spectrum distortion with respect to the benchmark $E_\nu^{-2}$ expectation for astrophysical sources, as well as peculiar anisotropies. A direct comparison with the data show a good match with the above-mentioned features. We further discuss possible future checks of this scenario.